


Magpie to the Morning

by soft_october



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Thieves, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Lovers, First Kiss, First Meetings, First Time, Fluff and Humor, Happy Ending, James In A Dress, M/M, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, but like late victorian, we are literally here to be gay and do crimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:34:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 40,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24952399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soft_october/pseuds/soft_october
Summary: Crozier foolishly believed that the first Magpie case he was consulted on would be solved by the time supper was ready. He swept into Sir John Barrow’s opulent home, been directed  to the man’s private collection, observed the empty space where prized swords once hung, the letter pinned in their place, the feather that had fallen to the floor.“You’re not looking for a magpie, gentleman,” he announced in that tone which had prevented his advancement at Scotland Yard ) as he held the feather between his thumb and forefinger. “You’re looking for a peacock.”The Magpie, dashing gentleman thief, has been running rampant all over London, robbing society of their treasures and delighting the masses with his daring and charm.Private Detective Francis Crozier intends to stop him.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 206
Kudos: 137





	1. Magpie Comes a Calling

**Author's Note:**

> This happened because I saw one post about a gentleman thief followed by a Terror gifset and I have not known peace since. It's all written but I'll take some time between each chapter to edit and make it shine. Things will get a little heavier later (it IS a Terror au, after all) but it's way less than anything you'd see in the show. Title taken from the Neko Case song. No period typical homophobia, everyone is just chill.

_**THE MAGPIE STRIKES AGAIN** _

**_DAVENPORT SILVER STOLEN!_ **

> _**The latest in a long line of dastardly deeds! The Magpie has once again struck terror and delight into the hearts of Londoners with his latest heist: the theft of Lord Davenport’s finest silver. The Magpie, displaying his usual flair for the dramatic, slipped into the house under cover of night in the midst of a large dinner party hosted by Lady Davenport herself before daringly absconding with the family silver by stripping every single knife, fork and teaspoon straight from the table mere moments before the guests were to enter for their supper! Upon the very plate from which Lord Davenport himself was to dine was found the now celebrated calling card of The Magpie, a dark blue feather and a note. Despite the efforts of this paper, Scotland Yard has refused to impart the details of this note, upon fear that copycats might attempt to -** _

Private Detective Francis Crozier threw down the paper in disgust, rattling the empty teacup at his elbow. He had woken up feeling cold and ill, despite the uncharacteristically warm September weather, but the whiskey in his morning tea had done little to warm him, and the abysmal reporting quite reversed whatever minor improvements the meal made in his mood.

The _Magpie,_ indeed!

“I suppose Inspector Ross will be calling on you today sir,” Jopson observed, with one eye on the paper as he began to clear away the breakfast things. Crozier muttered something incoherent and vaguely affirmative in reply, and Jopson, ever the dutiful steward, nodded as if he and his master were in perfect accord.

_The MAGPIE!_

The papers were a disgrace. (Francis had believed that since the incident with the Turnback Killer five years ago but - well, less said about that, the better.) No research, no not even a second look, just half a glimpse by one _Times_ reporter at the first feather the thief left in place of Sir Barrow’s antique weapon collection and they’d been all over the name, plastering the _nom de guerre_ over every headline from Cheapside to Mayfair before noon, long before Chief Inspector James Clark Ross called in his old friend (and former inspector) Francis Crozier to investigate.

Crozier foolishly believed that the first Magpie case he was consulted on would be solved by the time supper was ready. He swept into Sir John Barrow’s opulent home, been directed by a terrified constable (well versed in tales of Crozier’s temper, no doubt) to the man’s private collection, observed the empty space where prized swords once hung, the letter pinned in their place, the feather that had fallen to the floor.

“You’re not looking for a _magpie_ , gentleman,” he announced in that tone which had prevented his advancement at Scotland Yard (or any advancement he _might_ have had one day, if not for the brogue in his voice and the Irish in his blood) as he held the feather between his thumb and forefinger. “You’re looking for a _peacock_.”

It was these thoughts and others of their like that occupied him when the bell downstairs rang, and Jopson went down to answer it. He knew it would be Ross (Jopson was right on that score), as the Chief Inspector had called upon him three times in the month, never for a social visit, even diminished as they had been since Ross’ marriage. Each time the Magpie struck, Ross would arrive, hat in hand, asking Francis to come in and see if he could make heads or tails of it.

The Magpie, you see, was not your typical thief, crashing through windows and snatching up everything within arm’s reach or holding up passersby in the middle of the night. No - here was intelligence, forethought, even, dare I say it, a touch of _elegance_ in the capers, and while the rest of London was thoroughly enjoying the humiliation of their “betters” (there were no less than fifteen ballads composed about the Magpie’s deeds, sang by men and women alike in various states of intoxication in public houses each night and well into the next morning), the upper echelon of society was _horrified_ that their high walls and teams of servants were not enough to deter this master of his craft. They despaired that their silver and jewels, handed down through the generations (and more importantly, the envy of their peers) should be at risk as fodder for such a delicious scandal.

Well, at least _publicly_. More than a few victims secretly reveled in the sudden onslaught of attention from friends and reporters alike, and as one member of society cannot have anything without the rest becoming outrageously envious, others were desperate to contact the Magpie himself, that they might submit some of their less valuable treasures as the object of his next bit of mischief. But all had been foiled in this endeavour, as Francis had discovered within the first few weeks of the investigation (and with help from some less than reputable sources). It seemed the Magpie was not a man easily found no matter which side of the law one might be representing.

Regardless of how fashionable being robbed was becoming within certain circles, the image of propriety must be maintained, and Scotland Yard was in an uproar as members of Parliament and various Lords and Sirs and Ladies demanded that the culprit be apprehended, their outrage (real or manufactured) increasing exponentially with each new theft.

Originally, Francis didn't partake in either side of the fervor. Despite the mixup with the feathers, Francis considered the whole thing more amusing than anything else, a bit of a logic puzzle to entertain him through his long slog of things which chiefly occupied the hours of work for a private detective: cheating spouses, blackmailers, long lost relatives and a hundred other little nothings that required nothing more than an hour or so of research or a bit of observation.

How naive he had been!

In the ten years since he had been, ah, _encouraged_ to resign from the force, Francis made a pretty penny cleaning up the worst of Scotland Yard’s messes by solving the cases they could not. (His drinking and his temper, which made him such a nuisance in an official capacity, seemed not to be a detriment to his _unofficial_ consulting work). When Ross called on him that first time to tell him Sir John Barrow’s swords had all but been magicked away, they had a good laugh over the whole thing, promised to meet for drinks later that night after the whole thing was behind them.

And yet -

And yet supper passed that first night, and all the other nights since, and still Private Detective Francis Crozier could _not_ seem to track down the elusive Magpie.

_(Peacock.)_

What began as an amusing distraction quickly devolved into a full fledged obsession. _What a frivolous display of intelligence and skill,_ Francis would think to himself, quite unprovoked, and then shout if he was deep enough in his cups. A man like that could be put to good use in an honorable profession, not frittering away his youth and talents on this - false gallantry, this spectacle! It was like a rock in his shoe he could not dislodge or a rough seam on the inside of his shirt: irritating to no end and impossible to forget.

(The papers, which insisted on glorifying all the Magpie’s misdeeds, did not help in the slightest.)

“Inspector Ross to see you, sir,” Jopson said as he reentered the sitting room. He was followed by Ross himself: tall, handsome, oldest friend of Francis, loving husband to Ann and darling of all Scotland Yard.

“ _Chief_ Inspector, Jopson,” Francis corrected. Though the promotion had been recent, the young man still coloured as if speaking a single improper title was the most egregious _faux pas_.

“Oh don’t torment the lad,” Ross admonished, his face rather jovial for someone who had half the aristocracy breathing down his neck. “It’s alright, Jopson.”

“Some tea, James?” Francis asked amid Jopson’s grateful stammers.

“I should hope so, and some breakfast, if there’s any available. I haven’t eaten a thing all morning.”

Francis should have liked to note that it was merely eight thirty, and he had only risen from bed a mere twenty minutes prior, but he well knew Ross’ dreadful early habits, and was certain the man had been up and running since dawn with naught but a tepid cup of tea to fuel him.

“Well, sit down - I’m sure Jopson can fetch you something - and let’s hear all about it.” With a murmur of thanks to Jopson for the tea that was placed at his right hand, Ross launched into a more grounded version of the fanciful nonsense Francis read in the paper.

“You’ve seen the headlines, I’m sure,” he began, with an imperious toss of his hand towards the discarded _Times_ upon the table.

“Mmm, yes, have they decided that the man is truly a phantom yet?” Francis chided. “Made of smoke and fantasy?”

“Hardly,” Ross said, with a sardonic twist of his lips. “It took us all of twenty minutes to find a discarded servant's livery in a heap of rubbish in the alley behind the house! That tells us how he got in, but so far the trail stops there.”

“Posing as a servant to steal all the silver? Ingenious,” Francis said, in a way which clearly implied it was not. “But how did the rest of them not notice?”

“You know how it is when these people throw one of their galas, calling in temporary help from all quarters.”

“Easy for an unassuming man to slip in among the chaos, I suppose,” Francis agreed, uneasily. “Although someone must have seen _something_. That many people about, surely -”

“The rest of the staff admits to nothing, I’m afraid. We’re working on tracking the source of the temporary help, see if we can come up with something there, but if not - well, it’s nothing but another dead end.”

“I suppose that’s where I come in?”

“Ever the astute observer, Francis.”

“Indeed,” Crozier replied with an amused twist of his lip. “I’m matchless in my powers of detecting the obvious.”

“Now don’t be so dour. Who knows, this may finally be your chance to get him!”

“Perhaps.” Francis sat back in his chair, contemplating the best way to tackle the puzzle. If servants were involved, he’d need someone who could get them to loosen up, say the things they might not to a man operating in a more official capacity.

“I’ll ring Blanky. He’ll get the men talking like no one else can.” ( _Like I cannot,_ Francis didn’t say. But his reputation as a masterful investigator did not come on the recommendation of his social skills, and if he could foist off the buttering up of witnesses to people like Ross and Blanky, the better for it.) “Do you have a man on duty at the house?”

“Sergeant Tozer,” Ross replied. “He knows to watch for you, and allow you your little freedoms. I must be back at the station, else I would accompany you.” Francis nodded.

“I’ll stop by to recruit Blanky and then drop by the house after.”

“That’ll be grand.” Ross paused, and drummed his fingers on the table. “Francis?” His tone implied some sort of censure was sure to follow, and Francis would have met his eyes in challenge if Ross didn’t suddenly find the sofa’s unspeakably hideous pattern so captivating.

“Yes?”

“Keep in mind that Lord Davenport is a peer of the realm. You are at his house at my invitation.” Francis rolled his eyes.

“I shall strive to keep my temper in check.” Ross nodded, but his lips remained pressed in a flat line, and his eyes darted towards the half empty bottle of whiskey on the sideboard. Francis felt his foot tense inside of his shoe, his fingers shudder in anticipation of the talk he knew had long been coming. But then Ross’ face broke into an easy smile that belied none of what he might have wished to say.

It seemed the breakfast table was no place for such an intervention after all.

“Alright then.” Ross scooped a scone up from the table and took a bite. “I _do_ have a good feeling about this one, Francis,” he gesticulated with the scone, which responded by spawning crumbs all over the table. “He tripped up with the uniform - he’s making mistakes. It won’t be long now.”

“Let’s hope you’re right.”

Francis _didn’t_.

* * *

Three and a half hours into his investigation, Francis had, frustratingly, discovered little further information. He hoped that Blanky was faring a bit better in his inquiry at the pub round the corner where the staff of the house was known to frequent, but that hope was limping to its death in slow, sluggish circles.

There was nothing. Not a fingerprint, footprint, or scrap of clothing could be found, he couldn’t bully a single shifty porter or maid into admitting to bribery or an abruptly departed sweetheart who took particular interest in the movements of the staff. Each and every one he interviewed all told their own version of the same story, the essentials of which were as follows. During the evening in question their numbers had been bolstered by temporary hands, supplied by a local agency. The table was set, the room empty of people no longer than five minutes before the theft was discovered, and all the staff had been searched carefully by the police. No missing silver had been found on any of them, nor in the house or the alley outside. He was trapped in the weeds of a dreadful conversation with the housekeeper (“Just ridiculous, all those rough constables marching too and fro when Lady Davenport spent so much time planning that dinner, she’s been abed all morning with her poor nerves!”) before he thought about the question he should have been asking, and felt all the more foolish for not having come up with it sooner.

“What about the guests?” he asked the housekeeper, interrupting her lengthy diatribe on the many ailments of the Lady Davenport, half of which were undoubtedly self inflicted.

“The guests, sir? They were as respectable as any I ever-”

“I don’t give a fig who they might have been!” Francis exclaimed, his patience rapidly nearing its end, fueled by fury at his own negligence. “Were the guests _searched_?” The housekeeper gasped and looked at him like the man had spat in church.

“Of course not!” she cried. “It wouldn’t be -”

“Damn -” The livery found behind the house had been a ruse! Francis _knew_ it had been too easy! He needed a list of the guests, that was certain, and the housekeeper quickly informed him she could have the Lady’s list for the invitations copied with no trouble at all before bustling him out of the servant’s quarters entirely. Crozier stood in the parlor for a minute or two, fuming at the endlessly winding cavern of manners that made investigations so difficult before decided he would go and bully the man at the door (if he stopped for a bit from his flask on the way - nobody saw, and it had been a frustrating morning).

“The guests!” he barked. The slouching spine Tozer had momentarily adopted became as rigid as any Royal Marine’s. “Did Ross know they let the guests just walk right out the door without even-”

“I wouldn’t know sir,” Tozer replied. “I’ve only been on duty since this morning.”

Before Francis could say more, a maid bundled into the foyer from within the depths house. She looked around for a moment, confused, until her brown eyes landed on Crozier and she sighed in relief.

“There you are, Mr. Crozier!” she declared, clearly flustered. “I feared you had gone and left us!” She pulled a letter from the pocket of her apron, and when she looked up Francis could not help but notice the charming way her brown curls fell about her cap, how they were highlighted by the sun streaming in through the upper windows. “I beg your pardon sir, I was told to give this to you.” She curtseyed to him and stepped back.

“Rather quick,” Crozier muttered, assuming what he held in his hand was the list he had asked for. Perhaps the housekeepers of London could be relied upon after all, even if she sealed a simple list of names with wax as if it were a king's missive and -

He started, almost dropping the letter on the polished wooden floor at his feet.

This was _not_ from the housekeeper.

And it most certainly was _not_ a guest list.

> _My Dear Mr. Crozier_
> 
> _I trust this missive finds you well. I hope you shall forgive my audacity, but I simply could not help myself in making myself known to you. I am honored that you should be called upon yet again to investigate my misdeeds, though I’m afraid you shall once more be in want of clues. Have you figured out yet how I managed it? I know you deduced the methods by which I made off with Sir Thomas Bigby’s horse, and I’ll have you know you came frightfully close to finding me out that day, though I triumphed in the end._
> 
> _Though you don’t strike me as a man to be fond of games, I’d like to propose a wager you may take an interest in. However, if you tell the police, I’m afraid that will spoil the game and I shant wish to play any longer._
> 
> _Lady Prendergast hosts a dinner tomorrow evening, no doubt draped in those emeralds she holds so dear. I plan on relieving her of their weight around her throat in my usual fashion._
> 
> _If you can outwit me, I’ll give you something I think you will enjoy._
> 
> _Yours,_
> 
> _The Gentleman Thief, The Peacock,_
> 
> _J_
> 
> _P.S. I do appreciate your refusal to call me "The Magpie." I do admit it was not the name I intended, but more fool me, I suppose, for relying on the observational skills of the Scotland Yard and the press. Would that I have mailed you a feather directly, and you could have sorted it all out from the start._
> 
> _Alas, it is too late now._

Crozier read the note through three times, his irritation and rage building with each superfluous flourish of the author’s pen. He was familiar enough with the notes that had been left at all the crime scenes, had analyzed the handwriting to no avail, tracked the paper and ink and wax to more than three dozen sources from within the city of London alone. He, more than anyone except perhaps Ross, could determine the authenticity of a note from The Magpie himself.

 _It was him_.

“Where did you get this?” he snapped at the maid, all thought of her charming curls burned to ashes in the inferno of his fury.

“Who are you talking to, sir?” Tozer asked, still from his station at the door.

The maid was gone.

Apprehension began to shore up within his belly, and he tore back through the house, calling again for the housekeeper. The poor woman bundled up the stairs, affronted that the home she kept so well for her lady should so quickly devolve into chaos.

“Mr. Crozier, what is it now?” she demanded. “I’ve made the list up for you, there is no need to -”

“The maid,” Francis interrupted.

“What maid, sir?” The housekeeper narrowed her eyes. “If you’ve upset one of my girls I don’t care _who_ you are, I’ll put you right out on your ear before you can say -”

“Did you send her to deliver this letter to me?” Francis asked, thrusting the paper between them.

“Certainly not! I’ve never seen that before in my life!”

“Which of the maids was it then?” Francis barked. “Dark hair, lean. About the same height as me?”

“There is only Margaret and Jane on today,” the increasingly desperate housekeeper explained. “And Margaret is a tiny little thing, and Jane with blonde hair!” Crozier passed a hand over his face in exasperation as the entire situation, from beginning to end, crystallized before his eyes.

Lady Davenport had given a grand dinner for many guests, who brought with them escorts. The Magpie had snuck in among this crowd, stolen the silver, abandoned a servants uniform in the alley or been aided by an accomplice in the deed, and walked straight out through the front door where he was most likely _apologized to_ by a mortified hostess for the truncation of the evening. Then the thief had _returned_ to the scene of the crime, in disguise, _conversed_ with him, all for - for what? To cover up a clue? To laugh at the struggles of Scotland Yard?

To humiliate the detective attempting to track him down?

 _Well_.

Francis Crozier was _not_ to be outmatched. He would play the Magpie’s game.

And he would win.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lemme know what you think, or come hang out with me on the tumbls where I'm [@soft-october-night](https://soft-october-night.tumblr.com/)!


	2. Tin Roof Sounds Alarming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Francis follows the letter's instructions, and both he and the Magpie end up with a bit more than they bargained for.

As was the case with much of his life, Francis discovered that the easy way was barred to him.

Some of this was his own fault. He had not informed Ross about the interaction with the “maid” at the Davenport's, nor of the letter, when his first instinct was to tell his friend everything. He could pretend that it was only due to the explicit instructions of the Magpie, but this excuse was as thin and fragile as a brown leaf drifting along the street in December. There was _pride_ in his decision, and no small amount of recklessness too.

He was not a fool, though, eager to charge alone into the unknown, and employed his friend and frequent conspirator, Mr. Blanky in the enterprise. Blanky had as much luck with the staff of the Davenport household as Crozier had, and was eager to employ a more direct form of action in bringing the Magpie to justice.

Blanky did not ask about informing Ross, and Francis did not tell him.

If Francis had been not himself, or if Mr. Blanky was a bit less rough around the edges, the entire plan, which was to invite themselves along to the party and capture the Magpie in the act, would have gone along with no trouble at all.

There was a great deal of trouble.

The source of all his strife centered on Lady Prendergast, who, lamentably, was not a flitting young thing delighted by the idea that her jewels might be the Magpie’s next target, and was instead a frightful old battleaxe of a woman who buried three husbands and said that if the Magpie possessed the audacity to darken her door she would do the same to him.

“I’ve been seeing through all manner of men’s disguises for the last _fifty five_ years,” she declared, poking a bony finger into Francis’ face. “There will be no surprising _me_.”

He should have known that sort of obstinacy was not an auspicious beginning to the evening, and her complete unwillingness to cooperate in any way was equally frustrating. She outright forbade either Francis or Blanky from providing some semblance of security within the house, on the grounds that the aesthetic she cultivated would come to utter ruined.

“Mr. Crozier, I don’t wish to be impolite,” she said, and then paused, in the manner of someone who wishes to impart a grievous insult and knows the proper place to hold for the fullest effect. “But this is to be a well-mannered, genteel party. I have read enough about your… exploits in the paper to be certain that you would be quite uncomfortable here. You would find yourself _woefully_ out of place.” Francis opened his mouth to protest, but she continued blithely on, with no regard to any comment of his.

“You act only out of the goodness of your heart, of course! However, this household has been protecting my mother’s emeralds for the last ninety eight _years._ ” Crozier gnawed on the inside of his cheek, and at last she thought to take some sort of pity (or what passed for pity in her circles) upon him. “Yet if you believe you can do better you are free to spend your evening on the pavement in front of the house,” she finished, with a long look down her nose, quite a feat for a woman of such diminutive stature. Francis gritted his teeth against his temper, thanked the lady for her hospitality and understanding and resisted the urge to shove a vase off the table in the hall on his way out.

“Frightful sort of woman,” Blanky observed when Francis imparted all that transpired in the Prendergast sitting room. “Almost puts one on the side of the Magpie.”

“Almost,” Francis agreed. “But-”

“I know, I know, we’re spending the whole evening on the street, _waiting_ and hoping for your man to make an appearance.”

“ _My_ man!” Francis scoffed, while Blanky laughed in that open, unapologetic way of his.

“Well he’s not _mine_! I’m not the one who won’t stop talking about him!”

“We are _working a case_ , Tom!” Blanky shoved him in the shoulder.

“I’ll stop teasing when you stop making it so _easy_.”

Francis shook his head, and grumbled that investigations might be much simpler if only they did not involve _so many people!_

* * *

Alright, so The Magpie fled the scene.

Or _tried_ to, at least. He’d gotten _into_ the house under the supposedly watchful eye of the staff, stolen the emeralds right off Lady Prendergast’s neck during a commotion involving a small dog and some strawberry tarts, and barreled out through the service entrance in the back of the house by acting the role of a guest who had merely partaken of some poorly prepared oysters before leaping up a ladder prepared especially for the purpose and taking flight across the housetops of London.

He might have been free and clear, if not, hours ago, Francis had seen that same ladder, inquired as to its purpose, and, when it was discovered none had seen the workman who brought it earlier the day, took a gamble on the planned escape route and found it bearing fruit as footsteps rapidly approached his hiding place. He tensed, his muscles ready to spring into action until-

“Is that you, detective?” a clear voice rang out over the rooftops. “I rather feared you would stand me up this evening when I didn’t see you at the party.” Francis said nothing, cursing his luck, wondering how the Magpie knew he was there. “It’s no use skulking about. There’s a light shining in from that garret window there, and I’d know your profile anywhere, even in shadow.”

Francis bit back a groan before drawing up to his full height, his plan to tackle the Magpie to the ground thrown by the wayside when he admitted he was not capable of leaping twenty feet in a single bound and surprising the tall, lean figure of a man that stood ahead of him. He must have been stooping to play the role of the maid, for the Magpie was at least a head taller than him, with broader shoulders besides. He was dressed in a dark blue coat, well tailored pants and a top hat that _gleamed_ in the moonlight. Though he wore his hair longer than was fashionable, he wore his curls with the elegance any woman at the party from which he had come would have given their pinky finger to possess. A black mask covering the upper part of his face completed the ensemble, though his amused smirk and strong cut of his jaw were on full display.

“Did you put on that mask just for _me_ , Magpie?” He said it to annoy the thief, and judging by the proud toss of his long dark hair, (unencumbered by a maid’s cap, this time) his words hit the mark.

“Now _please_ don’t call me that.” Half of his face may have been concealed by a mask, but Francis could still trace the quirk of his lips. It was an interesting face, and would look all the more interesting plastered on the front page of the paper behind bars. “And I couldn’t very well walk into the Lady’s home wearing it, could I?”

“I suppose not,” he replied, making minute motions to close the distance between them. “The papers got the name wrong then, did they?”

“It’s dreadful,” the Magpie continued, backing away with each small step Francis took, as if they were doing a new dance that spanned the entirety of a dance floor. “I go to all that trouble to acquire those pretty blue feathers and they go off and call me _a magpie_!” He shook his head, and hopped up to a chimney as Francis made another clumsy advance. “I should have gone for the tailfeathers - recognizable as anything - but thought that was too ostentatious, even for me. Yet I am endlessly grateful for _you_ , detective, for without you no one should know my true identity.”

“As a preening peacock, you mean?”

“The very same!” The Magpie replied cheerfully, taking no offense at Francis’ less than generous tone. The thief leaned against the chimney carefully so as not to stain his coat, appearing totally at leisure, even with a man with designs to apprehend him standing practically within striking distance. It was bold as brass, spoke to more than a little vanity, and Francis wanted very much to dismiss him altogether. (He _would,_ surely. He was _not_ impressed at the man’s brashness.)

“I suppose you think yourself quite impressive -”

“Do you not?” The thief had not lost his bemused expression. “You haven’t tried to pull a gun _or_ a knife on me yet, so obviously I’m not the only one enjoying our little tete a tete.” The Magpie grinned - a white flash of teeth in the night - and Francis wondered if, behind the mask, a manicured eyebrow was arching toward his hairline.

“I may just be stalling you, before the cavalry arrives,” Francis remarked. “The way you prattle on you could be surrounded in -”

“Now that’s ridiculous, I thought you above such blatant lies.” The Magpie dismissed. “You only ever work alone or with that Mr. Blanky of yours, and I’ll bet my hat he’s wandering the streets somewhere below wondering where on earth you’ve gotten off to.” It was true, and Francis narrowed his eyes while the Magpie spun his hat around one silk-gloved finger.

“Been investigating _me_ , have you?”

“It’s a very fine hat.” He twirled it between his fingers before setting it back upon his head with a flourish. “I wouldn’t put it up for a wager if I thought I could lose. And you’ve been investigating _me_ for the better part of several months, as you are no doubt aware. I would be the worst sort of nemesis if _I_ knew nothing of _you_.”

“Quite bold of you to decide you're my nemesis already.” Francis wanted to snap, although it came out all wrong - far to light, for one thing.

“What can I say?” The Magpie grinned again. “I’m not known for my reservation. Why, when I was only a young man, I once -” He shook his head. “Well, perhaps we can save that for another evening. This is only our introduction after all. A man must keep some of his secrets.”

“I know enough about you to skip the comedy of manners, I should think,” Francis replied. “Surely we can dispense with the formalities.”

“What _do_ you know about me? I am always delighted to hear of myself from others.”

“Did we not just agree that a man must have some secrets?”

“You’re dreadful!” James clasped his hand to his chest, mocking a wound. “Turning my own words against me.”

“You only steal from the highest in society-” Francis conceded.

“Of course, whatever would be the _point_ , otherwise-”

“And I know you’re going to return the necklace this instant.” With this, Francis made a dive at the Magpie, who stepped neatly off the stone chimney block and hopped onto the roof ahead of them, just out of reach.

“Oh no,” The Magpie said, disappointed. “And we were having such a lovely time of it.” He took the necklace out of his pocket, held it up so that the green jewels glittered in the moonlight. “Whyever would I do such a thing, when the emeralds shall bring out my eyes so strikingly?” He set the necklace against his own bare throat, and Francis was aghast at the unfamiliar tug in his chest at the gesture. The emeralds did look _very_ well against his skin, certainly better than they ever did on the sallow Lady Prendergast, but that was -

“That’s neither here nor there,” Francis stated, flatly, but the Magpie’s eyes gleamed with mischievous sparkle, and Francis wondered exactly how much he had allowed his expression to give him away.

“I do wish we could meet by daylight. I cannot quite tell what you’re thinking, detective!” the Magpie tittered, although there was a higher note to it now, a touch of something - nervousness, perhaps, that hadn’t been there before. “But we must be getting on with our business I’m afraid. After all, you _have_ outwit me this evening, and as per our arrangement I’ll offer up the reward I promised.”

“And what reward would that be?”

“My name.”

“Your -” _His name?_ This was a trick, else the Magpie was truly the maddest criminal Crozier had ever tracked down.

“Well I’m aware of _yours_ , after all. Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier! It does roll rather well off the tongue, does it not?” The Magpie repeated the name, _Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier_ , savoring each syllable like decadent chocolates.

Francis had never thought his name anything but a _nuisance_ , a yoke he carried around his neck that kept him down as sure as his penchant for drink did. But to hear it roll off the Magpie’s practiced, honeyed tongue - well, it might have been a landed name, a Lord so and so, a _Captain -_ the captain he had longed to be and never been.

“I know my own name,” he snapped, to distract himself from his own thoughts and bring the situation back into hand. For fuck’s sake, he was a detective on a case! “What should I call _you_? I warn you, I’m not about to call you the Peacock.” The taller man laughed.

“James,” he replied,and if not for the way he said it (a little breathlessly, like a secret or a prayer) it would have been as simple an introduction as a chance meeting in Regents Park, the sun in the sky and the smell of grass on the wind. “You may call me James, if it pleases you.”

“James,” Francis repeated. He had expected something - extravagant, or at least something _clearly_ made up.

“Oh, I _do_ like the fit of your brogue about it! I should like you to say it again.” Francis sniffed. He’d not give him the satisfaction.

“Better than The Magpie, at least,” Francis said instead. James wrinkled his nose. “Indubitably. But alas, the time and tide wait for no man, and it seems our time has run out.”

“What do you -”

There was suddenly a terrific series of small explosions from the next rooftop over, and out of instinct Francis turned to see a wave of fireworks in every color of the rainbow ascending and exploding high into the night sky. The ensuing whirls and bangs demanded that crowds swarm in the street at once to see what was the matter, and cries of alarm turned to those of delight as the spectacle continued.

And though Francis would later say he turned back towards the culprit as quickly as he’d away, The Magpie - _James_ \- was gone, leaving only a fading impression of himself against the back of Francis' eyelids. He shook off the image, and climbed down from above.

Scotland Yard was swarming below, and with them were Inspector Ross who demanded answers, and Blanky, who wanted a laugh.

* * *

The Magpie struck twice more over the course of the autumn, once at an opera and another at a garden party. Francis thoroughly investigated each incident, and was proud to finally be moving forward on the investigation instead of frustrated at every turn. The name had led nowhere, as there were probably no less than a few thousand James' inside London proper, and he couldn’t very well go about following all of them until he had established a few more facts about the man.

Since the letter, in which he mentioned the incident with Sir Thomas Bigby’s horse, Francis had taken the time to review the case, found a stablehand who had been paid off and heard the sobbing lad’s entire tale from start to near incoherent finish. With this and other little clues, the esoteric shape of the Magpie began to coalesce. The Magpie - James - was a man in his late twenties or thirties, with a wealth of education behind him. He was well versed in the ways of society, and could blend into society in a dress, suit, or a uniform, with the confidence to walk right into a party to which he had not been invited and no one would bat a single curled eyelash at him.

Francis found plenty of reasons to dislike the Magpie, but it was only the last that caused the raw bile of jealousy to rise in his throat. This man, this _thief_ , was free to flit about the very society he preyed upon, while Francis would be as out of place at a garden party as a canker in a hedgerow. Lady Prendergast, that miserable old woman, had declared Francis should be uncomfortable in the glittering world she moved within and yet had allowed the Magpie close enough to unclasp a necklace from her throat!

“He was rather handsome,” was all any of the guests could say when asked to recollect his face.

“Lovely hair,” Lady Prendergast herself added. “Tall. Reminded me a bit of my second husband.”

“Might as well just round up all the handsome James’ in the city,” Francis muttered to Blanky one evening at his own flat with an open bottle and two glasses between them.

“Your Ross would be among them,” Blanky replied. Francis gave him a dark look. “It’s not… It’s not the name, is it?” Blanky continued, heedless of the danger. “You haven't gone and decided to trade one James for another?”

“Tom…” Francis warned. They never talked about it, about _Ross_ , about what Francis had wanted and Ross unable to give him. Blanky had been there for the worst of it (had fished Francis out of the gutter more than once after Ross’ wedding and dragged him back home) but the whole thing had been humiliating from start to finish, and it was a testament to Ross' goodness that Francis was still able to call him one of his dearest friends. But Francis had never spoken of the finer details with anyone, and insisted on keeping it that way.

“Didn't work out so well the first time. Can't imagine a wanted criminal is an improvement, unless things have changed, I _did_ settle down years ago.”

“Tom -”

“But what do I know, maybe that adds a little spice to the whole situation, keeps things interesting -”

“Tom!” Francis banged his glass down on the table, harder than he'd intended. A nerve twitched in Blanky's temple.

“Fine, fine.” Blanky abandoned the line of questioning before returning to his own glass. “It’s only - Frank, you’ve never given a fuck about petty theft! He’s a dandy riling up his betters by trotting off with their prized trinkets, not the Turnback Killer! You thought this whole thing was just as funny as I did - bunch of society toffs tripping all over themselves with worry and anticipation. But now its been weeks of moping about his flashy style and his coats and his letters and fretting about like a schoolboy with a crush who doesn't know what to do about it!” Francis stared into his half empty glass of whiskey, refusing to dignify such absurd accusations with the proper response. Blanky shook his head. “Glad to see you mooning over someone who isn’t Ross or Miss _Cracroft_ , at any rate.”

 _Sophy._ After Ross had gone off and married Ann, Francis decided that nothing would suit but that he do the same. He was sick at heart with the absence of Ross, and every time he looked in the mirror he saw whatever small amount of charms he had once possessed crumbling into wrinkles and thinning hair and deep, dark circles under his eyes. _If not now, then when?_ he thought. And if he had chosen differently, perhaps he might have been happy. But Francis, ever the contrarian to his own happiness, decided no one else would suit except Chief Inspector Franklin’s niece, the lovely Miss Sophia Cracroft. Sophia was beautiful, intelligent, and completely uninterested in marriage to him. Oh, she had _entertained_ him, and herself, for some time, but Francis, because he was lonely and crawling underneath the bountiful table of humanity for scraps of affection to feed on, had thought this meant that she was _serious_ , and proposed.

_Twice._

She was not serious.

It had been rather an ugly scene.

“What about you?”Blanky asked, snapping Francis out of his reverie.

“What about me?” Francis replied.

“You’ve seen him, dressed as that maid, and again on the roof. Why can’t _you_ identify him?”

“You’re _absolutely_ right, line up all the handsome James’ for me and I’ll make as good a go of it as any Lady Prendergast.”

“I’ll wager you were so - so befuddled by the man you don’t even-”

“I _was not_.”

“What color are his eyes then?”

“Brown,” Francis said, without hesitation, and remembered how they had looked in the haze of the moonlight, _the emeralds shall bring out my eyes so well_. “Same as his hair.”

“Good to know your skills of observation have not been struck dumb by infatuation,” Blanky prodded.

“Just as well yours haven’t been done in by age, old man,” Francis retorted, and poured them another round amidst Blanky’s laughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope ya'll enjoyed the rooftop banter between the two of them because there's a whole lot more where that come from! Come yell at me here [@soft-october-night](https://soft-october-night.tumblr.com/)!


	3. Diamond at the Bottom of a Drain

Upon his return home from his club late one evening, Francis was chagrined to find a letter stuffed into his coat pocket, written in that same fine hand as the one he had been handed at the Davenport’s. He made a brief shuffle through the series of faces in his mind: who had he brushed past at the club, who had he passed on the street? But the memories were muddled in whiskey amber haze, and he found himself struggling to muster up even the slightest hypothesis as to which disguise the Magpie adopted.

Same ink, same paper as the last time, both of which led nowhere when he made a thorough investigation of the last missive the Magpie handed him. A type of paper that was sold in stores all over London, and an ink favored by clerks, bank tellers, lawyers, clergy, and housewives.

So, only two thirds of the city's inhabitants. _Truly_ the clue that would crack the case wide open.

The seal, however, was in a different wax than the last, and was of a custom design. Francis traced his finger along the elaborate J with its curlicues and filigrees set in a deep blue, and wondered what such a difference might mean. His mind, sluggish and plodding as a tortoise, was in no fit state to provide an answer, so instead Crozier dug into the contents of the letter themselves.

> _My Dear Mr. Crozier,_
> 
> _Some time has passed since our paths last crossed, and yet you have neither called nor written. One might think we were yet strangers, with no clandestine meetings upon the rooftops in our shared past at all! I am willing to forgive you this time, if you will again indulge me in a little game of wits._
> 
> _You have not yet been able to make out one of my disguises, at least if this letter finds you, as I suspect it might. (I was the gentleman who stole your hansom cab out from under you. You should take a different route home from your club on occasion. You are so frightfully predictable it would be dreadful if your demeanor were to incite someone to murderous ire, which I have no doubt is well within your capabilities.) The House of Mirth is giving another of their delightful fashion parades, and what better place to be seen in society than there?_
> 
> _In case you are in a bit of a state this evening, and, judging by the way you’ve been acting recently you shall be, allow me to be plain. I will be at Mirth’s fashion parade Friday next, and there shall be in my most magnificent disguise yet. I invite you along as my guest and my nemesis._
> 
> _I wonder if my next treasure shall fascinate you as much as the emeralds._
> 
> _Yours,_
> 
> _James_
> 
> _The Peacock, Gentleman Thief, etc, etc._

Francis fought the urge to crumble the letter in his fist the moment he was through reading it, though he did allow himself a furious crease along the bottom edge. The _audacity_ of the Magpie!

His fury was soon replaced by a deep sense of shame. James had been _that_ close to him this evening, close enough to slip a note into his pocket, and he hadn’t known a thing!

He remembered well the interaction in front of his club. Francis flagged down a cab, the driver stopped, and then before he could even reach for the handle another man (in a blue coat? Or was it grey?) slipped past him, sat himself inside the carriage and called out an address. The driver had never even looked back.

Francis walked home, sneering and mumbling expletives about the gentleman’s rudeness to himself the entire length of the journey.

Fitting that the man they had been directed at was the Magpie.

It was a bit distressing that he was unable to recall the colour of the coat. The moment he decided it was blue he was certain it had been grey, and this launched another tirade about why the coat mattered at all. Francis may have been on his second bottle by the time he left the club behind, but surely his powers of observation were still astute! Perhaps if the lamps that lined the street could actually manage to penetrate the fog that seemed to constantly hang about the city like a shroud upon a corpse he might have been able to finally get him!

He whirled from the poor state of the gas lamps in front of his club back to the letter, creased that bottom fold again and again as he read nothing but mockery and japes in every line. The barbs that the Magpie dared! “ _In a bit of a state this evening_ ,” who was he to be judged by a man who made his living hopping across good people’s roofing tiles and being a loquacious, overly dressed nuisance!

Well, the Magpie (not James, not _James_ ) would be in for rather a rude awakening come Friday evening. Francis was through with these games, through with being taunted and humiliated by a preening peacock, and all thought of being the one to capture the Magpie was surpassed by his desire to see him caught at all. Heedless of the time, Francis slammed his hat back on his head, and headed out the door to call on Ross.

* * *

The House of Mirth, an exquisite Parisian fashion house, often hosted their dreadful fashion parades in one of the grand exhibition halls in the heart of London, and the city was in desperate throes at the spectacle. Because the French, in their undying obstinacy, refused to obey the rules of society and abide by the Season, the trains would pack and the residences fill with young, fashionable men and women who were fond of attending a full two months before Christmas. They would titter away in their endless revolutions about the halls, where they would blush and anguish over the prices they could not afford and then order the items in spite of these protestations (or perhaps because of them). The chaperones that must accompany them were fond of clutching their pearls at the scandalous state of hemlines (a full two inches above the ankle in front!) and shaking their heads over the House of Mirth’s real, live models, who marched about the exhibition or sat atop pedestals like the final decorations on exquisite cakes.

Francis attended most large social gatherings in much the same way the staff did: with one eye on the clock and always ready to make a quiet exit. Yet this event he was almost looking forward to, resolved to tolerate a hundred displays of frippery and nonsense if it meant capturing The Magpie at last. He and Ross had been crafting a plan for the last week, consulting only Ross’ most trusted men, making sure that nothing should seem amiss _inside_ the exhibition hall, but that men would be stationed within and without out of uniform, so as not to arouse The Magpie’s suspicion. Blanky would be on hand on the street, again to give the illusion that Crozier was operating without the backing of the police, as he had before.

And once Francis gave the signal, the trap would be sprung.

He was confident in his ability to locate James among the throng, which had arrived in droves despite the unusually early coating of snow the city had received earlier in the day. He suspected that the man’s pride would insist he make an attempt to taunt Francis, perhaps even speak to him in some way, lost inside another clever disguise. But there would not be a drop of drink tonight; With the shame from his last encounter with the Magpie still smarting, Crozier fully intended to be at his finest.

He remained at his finest until fifteen minutes after he entered the hall and caught sight of Miss Sophia Cracroft, and her chaperone, Lady Jane Franklin. The two women were engaged in light conversation with others Francis had never seen before, and musical peals of laughter floated towards his ears over the general din of the throng.

Francis froze for a moment, as all the old feelings and hurts came rushing back in their fullest bloom, before immediately seeking refuge behind a nearby lady’s unfashionably wide hat. He turned away from them, hoping that Sophia might miss him in the crowd, that Lady Jane would -

“I dare say, that looks just like Mr. Crozier, does it not?” Lady Jane exclaimed over the heads of the crowd. Francis cringed and colored and tried to compose himself for what he knew must happen next. He stepped out from behind the hat as dignified as he could, looking about as if innocent of all knowledge of them.

“Mr. Crozier!” Lady Jane called. “It _is_ you!” They bustled over towards him, all smiles and good cheer.

“Miss Cracroft, Lady Jane -”

“Why Mr. Crozier!” Sophie’s eyes were wide - she was startled, but not displeased to see him. “This is a pleasant surprise! I did not think you would be interested in such an exhibition!” _I did not think fashion interested you_ , Francis heard. _Just look at what you’re wearing this evening, ten years out of date if it’s a day._ He braced his hand against his waistcoat, covering a wound that was not there.

“I - That is to say, I thought perhaps -” Excellent. Now he babbled like a child in front of her, and she would know the effect she still had upon him.

“Dear me,” Sophia shook her head in apology. “I’m afraid that was worded quite ill. I only meant that I always fancied I would see you at a science or natural philosophies exhibition. I never knew you to be one interested in the latest niceties from the Continent, although I am quite pleased to have my assumptions so ill placed.”

“Yes, well, are we not meant to change our ways, as we age?”

“Indeed, Francis!” She bobbed her pretty head in a nod, and when her golden curls bounced around her face, Francis found himself in the uncomfortable position of suddenly picturing another set of curls, darker, and the way they framed a certain face around a mask or a maid’s cap. “And I am delighted to see you take such an interest in your person! Might I suggest the man modeling the gold waistcoat and green coat?” Here she pointed a delicate finger towards the densest part of the throng. “I daresay the combination would be an excellent match for your complexion.”

“I - thank you, madam,” he muttered, suddenly wishing this interaction at an immediate end. “I am sure your taste is fine, as always.” Sophia laughed a reply, and with a short farewell she sailed off with Lady Franklin and her friends at her side, as fine a fleet as any he had seen in his navy days.

He evaluated his conduct during the conversation as fair to passable, but the presence of the women was a constant prickle at the back of Francis’ neck, an itch he could not seem to scratch. He was distracted, staring into every face, looking for relief in the form of brown curls, a face with brown eyes, a long nose and a strong jaw. Yet in this endeavour Francis was again thwarted, as none of the faces had the right sort of eyes, with a clever, amused sort of gleam.

Francis found himself returning to the refreshment table perhaps more than was necessary, gulping down copious amounts of stewed tea that were made more tolerable with a healthy dose from the flask he kept in his pocket. During one of these not infrequent breaks, he found himself staring again at the back of Sophia Cracroft’s head. She was again locked in a casual conversation with a gaggle of well dressed women, tittering away and giggling into their gloves. He intended to pass them by without another thought, until he his own name drifted back at him.

“Wasn’t that Mr. Crozier I saw you speaking with earlier?” one of the ladies asked.

“He wasn’t trying to propose _again_ , was he?” This was followed by a bout of laughter. Francis stared down into the teacup he was gripping with white knuckles - his ears so red he was sure someone would make a comment to him at any moment.

“I must admit Sophy, I thought, at least for a little while, that you were serious about him.”

“Why _else_ would he think to apply for your hand twice!”

“Oh _no_ , Mr. Crozier was _never_ for me!” Sophia laughed. “He was an earnest suitor, and as such his proposal merited an earnest refusal.”

With a herculean effort, Francis unstuck his feet from the floor and made a stately, dignified march away from their voices, rising and falling like the divas in an opera and just as incoherent to him. He tried to reason himself out of his temper - she was not trying to harm him, the words were said in jest to a friend, her cruelty had not been directed at him.

Yet struck him it had!

So wrapped up was he in the depths of his own hurt it was several minutes before he heard the gasps from the center of the room, where a new model arrived at the center of the floor, to some commotion from the crowd. Francis possessed not a shred of concern for the fresh murmurs about “daring” and “ostentatious in the extreme” until he heard one older gentleman proclaim “What about the mask? I simply don’t understand -”

“James,” Francis said to himself at once. He turned and tried to make out the model through the crowd, but the crush shifted to one of the service doors, where he managed to catch a wisp of shining purple silk before it vanished into the dark.

Francis took off at a run. He wove between guests and servants alike, sent a porter sprawling with the tray of champagne, called the attention of the entire crowd with the shattering glasses. He regarded none of it, his eyes fixated upon the handle of the door where he _knew_ the Magpie had just left. Upon reaching the entrance he threw it open, watched a figure vanish around a corner, heard the rustle of layered fabric, perhaps a chuckle (or was that only his imagination?). There was no time to lose!

Oh, but the signal! In his haste to pursue the Magpie he had forgotten all about giving the signal to Ross’ men! Well, there was nothing to be done about it now! He tore through the labyrinthine passages in the service quarters of the exhibition hall. The rustle of the dress grew further and further away, but the telltale opening of a door sounded at the end of the corridor, and Francis charged through it, took note of the dazed constable sitting in a heap in the snow and cried at him to call for the rest of them while he pursued the Magpie into an alley, caught the flash of skirts and a tasteful pump as a shapely leg sprang up a stack of crates and over the rooftop above. Francis clambered after him, cursing the cold as it its best to numb his hands into useless claws.

The moon was full, and he had no trouble at all spotting James as he ran pell mell through the forest of chimneys churning coal smoke out into the night. Something about the dress, some sort of powder, or other glamour James added to it, made the garment shimmer in the night, glittering like a bauble on one of trees the queen was so fond of setting up at Christmas.

“Stop!” he cried, though it sounded absurd to his own ears, and again he could hear a faint giggle from his quarry filter back to him over the wind. He pursued in his stubborn, dogged way, making up for what he lacked in elegance (indeed, the Magpie sprang from roof to roof with the grace and control of a dancer) with the power and muscle that had served him well throughout his storied career, and soon found himself gaining on the thief.

“Do you think your friend will be able to find us?” James called over his shoulder.

“What are you talking about?” Crozier demanded.

“I mean are we far enough away?”

“From _who_?”

“Your Chief Inspector Ross! I shouldn’t care for him to interrupt us now, that I’ve gone to all the trouble to lead you astray.”

With a swirl of skirts that was too fine to be anything but intentional, James flourished to a standstill. Francis pursued for another few steps, before James held out a hand and he stopped in an instant. The dress was cut daringly low, and Francis quickly became distracted by the way the sleeves capped the Magpie’s broad shoulders, the tapering of his waist which could only come from the corset underneath, the line of his collarbone against a simple necklace of black beads - costume jewelry, Francis realized, though he couldn’t be sure about the authenticity of James’ bracelet or hairpins.

“That’s far enough, sir,” James said. “We are all alone on this roof, and how would it look for my reputations if we were seen!”

“We’ve got you this time,” Francis said through gritted teeth.

“That was rather clever, sir, with all those little constables,” James observed with a smile. “Next time you should bring along men who know how to dress, and don’t glower about a gathering so. It was _quite_ easy to tell them apart.”

“I’ll keep that in mind for the next fashionable thief I have cause to apprehend.”

“See that you do! But here we are again, just you and I, meeting out beneath the stars, your partner unchaperoned, you are a _rogue_ , Mr. Crozier.”

“A lady in a drawing room is more dangerous than you ever could be, Magpie.”

“Oh no, back to Magpie again? I thought our introductions dispensed with such titles upon our first meeting. Well, our first when we were plain to each other, at least.” James’ wry delight could make no impression on the wideness of Francis’ expression. He was in no mood for games, or teasing. The laughter of Miss Cracroft at the event below them still rang in his ears, _oh, no, Mr. Crozier was never for me_ , and then to stand here and have to listen to this man - this man who looked _absurdly_ charming standing there in a purple dress that shimmered with the slightest gesture - it was too much to be bourne.

“I’ll have no more of this mockery,” Francis replied. “No more being made a _fool_ this evening.” James narrowed his eyes.

“Have I done so?” He cocked his head to the side, examining Francis more thoroughly than he ever would have wished for. “I merely wanted to show off my -”

“You’re all the same!” Francis raged, giving up the pretense of hiding his emotions. What did it matter, when he was the laughingstock of society anyway? “Standing there and saying all sorts of nonsense you don’t mean. Who do you go laughing to at night, Magpie? I’m sure you have them rolling in the aisles with your tales about running circles around the miserable and incompetant Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier.” He spat his name like an epithet, like the curse it was.

“You seem rather angry this evening, Francis,” James said, quietly.

“You’ll not call me that,” he barked, ignoring the way his stupid ears burned to hear his name pronounced by this man, the way it soothed the hurt of his own pronunciation. “You’ll take that name out of your mouth at once.” Francis expected a smooth retort, _that is unfortunate, for I do so love to say it_ , or _but your cheeks go so delightfully red when I do!_ What he had not expected was a straightening of James’ spine, a slight step back, eyes straight and chin defiant.

“Yes, sir,” he replied, sharp as any navy man, the volume of his skirts detracting not a whit from the impression. “Will that be all, or am I dismissed?” There was something in his eyes Francis couldn’t read, and he felt off balance by the sudden change in James’ demeanor, like he had missed a step in a dance (he was a dreadful dancer, and the sense of creeping shame should not have come as such a shock to him.) A memory, long, long before their previous meeting, even before he’d joined Scotland Yard, stirred somewhere in the back of his mind, but he could not place it, not with the whiskey and fire running rampant through his veins. He took a few more steps closer, close enough to see the prickling of gooseflesh along James’ bare arms and shoulders, fought the absurd instinct to offer up his jacket.

“Not until what you return what you’ve taken,” Francis growled. “What was it? That bracelet?” he indicated the loop of blue and silver on James’ wrist. “Or the hairpins?” They were pearl - but pearl could be faked as easily as anything, and if the necklace was a fake -

“No,” James said, soft again. “I’m afraid you’ll never guess.”

“Then I’ll _make_ you tell -”

He dove for James, and even succeeded in getting a fistful of silk skirt. But this had been planned for, and with a twist of a few strings the dress was pooling at James’ feet, and Francis was treated to the sight of _yards_ of lacy petticoats, a dark corset trimmed with ribbons and embroidery, the hint of a chemise. Years and years of making a go of civility and propriety taught Francis to turn away at the sight, yet this deep seated lesson warred with other feelings within him, and the furor of this internal battle caused the heat to rush into his cheeks and his palms to sweat. So out of his depth was Francis that he at first did not even consider making a second attempt.

“May we meet again on a happier occasion,” James said, before twisting out of Crozier’s reach entirely. “Take care, Francis.” Then without another word he went skipping away along the London skyline, in naught but his pumps, petticoats, and a corset. Francis, furious at himself for his own state, could do nothing but watch him go, struggling with the notion that, despite everything, the whole spectacle appeared to be, in some absurd way, for his own benefit.

When he came back to himself he plucked the dress from where it had fallen in the snow, wondering if it had been a piece from the House of Mirth or one of James’ own. It was still warm from the heat of James’ body, and he thought about the chill of the evening, of a man bounding across the roofs of London in an austere state of undress.

With not nearly the vigor with which he went up, Crozier found his way back down to Ross in the street, to tell the embarrassed truth: Francis again failed in his endeavour, and the Magpie escaped with whatever valuable he'd been after. But instead of ire or disappointment, Ross’s face broke into a smile when he spotted Francis and rushed over to him.

“That’s it!” he exclaimed. “You’ve recovered it!”

“Recovered what?”

“The theft! The dress! Mr. Mirth will be one less moneyed voice in my ear!” Francis looked at the fabric in his hands as if he had never seen it before, and saw, finally, that the shimmering effect James had when he moved had nothing to do with - with glamour or some sort of mineral powder. There were _diamonds_ sewn along the embroidery of the dress itself!

“However did you get it?” Ross wondered. Blanky had joined them in the interim and began coughing wildly into his arm, disguising his laugh from exactly no one.

“Oh I’m sure Frank has his ways,” Blanky said with a raised eyebrow. “Wouldn’t be the first skirt you’d managed to wriggle someone out of, now would it?” Francis offered a hollow chuckle, and when Ross held out his hand, Francis could find no reason why he shouldn’t hand over the dress. He allowed the fine silk to slip one last time through his fingers as Ross took the garment from him and went to go find Mr. Mirth.

Francis’ hands felt warm all the way home.

* * *

After a thorough and private celebration of his own upon returning to his flat, Francis did not arise until eleven the next morning, and groaned at the thin line of bright sunlight that crept in between the curtains. He was well familiar with the ache in his head, the tongue he had to peel off the roof of his mouth before trying to choke down water. Noon found him in the sitting room in his shirtsleeves, his head buried in his hands and cursing consciousness while Jopson fretted about him, a dragonfly unsure of its purchase. Relief for either of them did not come until half past one, when the bell rang and Jopson almost flung himself down the stairs to go answer it, with a pointed “Now who could that be?”

Yet despite Francis’ physical state, in spite of cursing the slightest hint of strong light or every noise louder than a gentle footstep, he was feeling - if he were being _honest_ with himself, he was feeling rather _well_. An unusual state of affairs to be sure, and as Francis poked at his breakfast he made several promises to himself not to become used to it. He, Francis Crozier, outsmarted James - the _Magpie_ \- had he not? He reclaimed a dress valued at an obscene two thousand pounds - it was right there in the paper that Jopson placed on the table, where Francis could not fail to read it, _PRIVATE DETECTIVE THWARTS SCHEME,_ though it was somewhat diminished by the next line, _MAGPIE STILL AT LARGE_.

Ah well. Let James - the Magpie - remain at large for a bit longer. Their conversation on the housetops had given Francis several new leads, and he would get started on them as soon as he could turn his head without feeling like his ears were stuffed full of cotton. (And as soon as the odd feeling in his chest whenever he thought of purple silk and lace and the sad softness of a warm voice.)

 _Take care, Francis_.

But the shimmer that ran through Francis’ thoughts like silver thread in a dark blue waistcoat found itself unraveled the moment Ross stepped into his sitting room. Francis needed no more than a cursory glance at the paleness of Ross’ cheek, the slight tremor in his hand, before sending Jopson to fetch a strong brandy. He rose to take his old friend by the elbow and lead him into a chair, where Ross collapsed like a poor puppet with cut strings, and turned to Francis with eyes that had not seen a wink of sleep. How changed from the night before! This was no fault of any gentleman thief or even an ordinary cutpurse! The last time he had seen his friend look so was -

“Is it him?” Francis asked, though he feared he knew the answer.

Ross closed his eyes and nodded. In that, in the barest inclination of Ross’ head, all thought of James and the warm feel of a dress in Francis’ hands was iced in by the cold dread that entered Francis’ heart.

The Turnback Killer had struck again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy, the plot is here! House of Mirth is a play on the House of Worth, one of the foremost fashion houses of the late 1800s. They were fond of using live models, shorter hemlines, and revolutionized the industry by making fashion and ordering dresses a public spectacle instead of a private affair. 
> 
> As always, I'm here at [@soft-october-night](https://soft-october-night.tumblr.com/)!


	4. This Thundering and Lightning Gets You Rain

In a voice that wavered, Ross took him through the details of the scene.

A poor, hapless chambermaid had stumbled upon the crime on her way to work at the ungodly hour of five in the morning. The victim had been left in the same state as those victims in the incidents which occurred five years ago, that string of murders which caused Ross’ hands to shake so badly he almost resigned his position. Francis, well into his forced retirement from Scotland Yard by that time, was called upon before even the papers caught wind of the first murder, as his experience, cool head in the face of horrors and keen eye for details were sorely needed.

However, even Francis Crozier had to bite back the bile that rose up in his stomach when he came upon the state of that first victim - a Lieutenant Graham Gore.

This latest case was no different, and though Francis was already running through the possibilities for _why_ there had been such a long break in the murders (picked up for something small and just got out, copycat killer, army man back from his tour or navy man who got back into port) he listened attentively as Ross, after sipping deeply from a teacup that was more whiskey than tea (bless Jopson) described the setting of the scene, the pattern of blood, the viciousness of the attack. He felt that familiar nausea rise up within him, but he was no green constable, to be found emptying his stomach in the bushes after his first case, and he controlled the urges his body wished to give into until Ross had finished.

“What kind of man, Francis - what kind of _creature_ could do such a thing?” The teacup clacked unevenly against the porcelain saucer as Ross attempted to set it down.

“Not a creature,” Francis said, with a shake of his head. “A man. Just a man.” Ross nodded, miserable, and passed a hand over his face. In earlier days, Francis might have laid a hand on his, or pressed his shoulder, but such things had ended long ago, and he did neither.

“You are right of course, but sometimes -” Ross huffed. “There is a _darkness_ in these scenes, Francis. Like he's… like he _wants_ us to be horrified. And I should not like to meet him in a dark alley at night, not for all the gold and glory of the empire.”

“I should think not,” Francis replied. Ross drummed his fingers on the table, a nervous tic he had not seen his friend employ in many months. “You should return home,” he suggested. “You are in no fit mood to continue for the day.

“There is too much to do -” Ross waved his arm, and the gesture succeeded in crashing the abused teacup to the floor, where it cracked cleanly in two pieces.

“Everything alright, sirs?” Jopson called from the kitchen.

“Francis, I’m dreadfully sorry -”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Francis dismissed. “I’ve always hated that set.” (In truth, the hideous pattern rather reminded him of something a sour maiden aunt might gossip over with her equally sour friends.) “Now, please, I am sure your lovely Ann would not wish you to work yourself into such a state. You’ve had a troubling morning, go and sleep it off and come back refreshed.”

“I suppose you’re right. But you will tend to the matter today?”

“Indeed. I shall go down to the station as soon as you depart. The plates will be developed by then?” Ross nodded.

“I’ll also have a look at the scene myself. The delay between incidents is a clue, Ross, and _that_ is how we will get him.” Ross nodded, though there was still doubt in his eyes, a question caught somewhere between his throat.

“Francis?”

“Yes?”

“Do you ever -” he sighed, and his eyes wandered to the map that Francis kept along the wall, tracing the routes they had once sailed together, long, long ago when they were young and the world wanted to offer them more than an endless string of melancholic days and uneasy nights. “More and more I find myself wishing we could have remained in the Navy, rising through the ranks, captains of our own ships, bound for some glorious destination.” Francis often felt the same pull Ross did. The older he grew the more their past gleamed, a precious gem in the murky haze his life had become. And yet -

“There was nowhere for us to go, there. You and I would still be second and third lieutenants, trawling about the ocean in circles, hunting pirates that always get away, or else sousing about London or Portsmouth on half-pay. You know that.” Ross shrugged, his exhaustion evident in the drooped line of his shoulders, the way his neck was disinclined to hold his head upright.

“We were born too late, I think. Imagine the two of us, setting Napoleon himself on the run, or making discoveries, sailing to the ends of the Earth.”

“You would have made a dashing captain,” Francis conceded. “Though I would have been a sorry excuse for your second.”

“You are, as always, too hard on yourself. Given the chance you'd have made a magnificent captain.”

“In another lifetime, perhaps. But we are in _this_ one.”

Ross rose from the table and Jopson appeared beside him as if summoned by magic to help him into his hat and coat. “There is nothing left to be found upon the seas, any rate. We must contend ourselves with what unexplored darkness lies in the capabilities of men.” A less observant man would have missed how Ross’ hand slipped off the buttons of his coat, how he shoved his trembling fingers into his pockets. Were it later, and his faculties sapped away by whiskey, Francis would have missed it as well.

“Give my love to Ann, James” Francis said. “And allow me to send Jopson along with you.” It didn't appear to Francis that Ross could make it back down the stairs, let alone halfway across the city. There was a fraction of hesitation before the expected refusal, and that was enough leverage for Francis to bully Ross into the escort. Within ten minutes he was left alone in his rooms, jotting down his thoughts in a fresh notebook, consulting his case notes from five years earlier, pouring over photographs, statements from witnesses, from family members of the victims, lists of evidence, of suspects. The casefile on the Magpie, which had scarcely left his sight in the last few months, lay buried under the morning paper, forgotten.

His head began to ache.

* * *

Investigating the Turnback Killer the last time had been nothing short of a herculean feat. Barely any credible eyewitness testimony, their only clues the certainty that the man was a vicious hand with a knife and no expert in butchery or surgery, victims chosen seemingly at random: all of it made for an impossible investigation, and that was _without_ the cloud of paranoia that gripped the city and sent its residents into the stupidity that terror and uncertainty brings. But there _were_ definitive facts, and it was with these that Francis began his new investigation.

The killer's usual target was men on their way home from a long night of indulgence, the way their friends told it. In such a state and with such a method, they were probably dead before they even knew their throats had been slit.

The first victim, found in a dingy street the locals called Turnback Alley, gave the killer his name, while the gore at the scene had given each and every responding constable the urge to unburden their stomachs of breakfast the moment they laid eyes upon it. Small blessings, though, as the desecration had been done posthumously, according to the medical examiner who made this grim proclamation with a handkerchief to his face.

Francis had been grateful to hear it.

For _months_ it had continued, bodies turning up every few weeks until the killer had a solid seven victims to his name, the city in an uproar, mobs of men and women roving the streets at night, parents forbidding their children out of doors, the newspapers tearing the cities officials to shreds, Parliament debating proclamations (as if the killer would have stopped if only the House of Lords would simple _ask_ him) and then - nothing. The killings stopped as swiftly as they had begun, and in time the city settled into an uneasy peace (or as peaceful as London could ever be, at any rate).

Now, five years later, another victim.

It was the best clue they'd ever had.

After visiting the scene, viewing the photographs provided to him by Scotland Yard, and concluding that there was practically nothing new there to add to the picture of the investigation, Francis scoured through prison records, looking for anyone who had been sent to prison just after the last victim, and been released any time in the last few months. This resulted in a manageable list, and he recruited Blanky, Jopson, and even Jopson’s man, Edward Little (affectionately called Ned by his partner) to help him work through the hundred or so names.

Unfortunately, of those hundred, a mere _ten_ were deemed suitable suspects, and serious investigations into these ten petered out over the course of the next week.

Yet planting all his saplings in a single orchard would have been the mistake of a beginner, and another field had begun to bear fruit. Upon the same day he began sorting through the prison lists, he also sent telegrams to agencies at all the major ports and cities across the empire, explaining the situation in London and asking if any similar such cases had emerged within the last five years.

Here, finally, Francis found success! Almost at once, a startling pattern emerged, one that began three months after the last London murder, in Cairo, then continuing east along the sea routes. Istanbul, Bombay, Sydney. Each murder committed using the same methods, each one unsolved. As Francis traced the lines upon the map procured for this exact purpose, he could have wept with relief as the picture became crystal clear.

He was looking for a sailor.

Or a man who passed himself off as one.

The next day - a dreary Thursday - found Francis in the Naval Offices, scouring through ship’s logs, piecing together which ships were in port when the murders occurred, who was on the manifest, cross referencing spindly handwriting until his eyes were going cross and a headache was building behind the temples.

Though the murders appeared to follow a common navy tour, he supposed it was possible the murderer _might_ have been travelling on a merchant ship instead. The navy, though, kept cleaner records, and he would rather exhaust that trail than attempt to ring up a cabal of smugglers that passed themselves off as legitimate captains, demanding to know if they had harbored a vicious killer among their typical rough crew. Of course, if the naval records led nowhere, he would _have_ to turn to those sorts of men, and the list of suspects would balloon to an absurd length.

Would that the Turnback Killer was more like the Magpie, sending him cordial notes describing the site of his next attack!

An ugly thought struck him then. He thought about their last rendezvous, the Magpie straightening, the “yes sir” - evidence of a sailor’s life if there ever was one. Wouldn’t that be the perfect cover, pretending to be an extravagant thief and then turn around and - Well there were certainly enough James on the manifests, were there not? It was not outrageous.

But…

This was not the first time he had thought of that night. He had run the evening, and the time before it in his head countless times. _May we meet again on a happier occasion._ An emerald necklace. The swish of purple silk and the embroidered lace beneath. He did _not_ know the Magpie - James. It would be absurd to remove him from the list of suspects because - because he couldn’t get the way the man pronounced his name out of his head!

He was growing old and soft and indulgent, none of which he nor the next victim of the Turnback Killer had the slightest bit of time for. He pressed the heels of his palms to his eyelids, only once, and began again to crawl through the files.

By the end of the next day, Francis narrowed the number of ships down to a reasonable few, and, with assistance from some old acquaintances, managed to track down the addresses of several officers connected to those ships. Francis and Blanky would track down those that were currently in London one by one, hoping that someone remembered something.

It was not much, but it was a start, and after delivering his half of the list to Blanky, who promised to begin hunting the names down that very day, Francis found himself in sore need of some gentleness. The thought of going back to his lonely flat was almost enough to choke him, and against his better judgment, his feet found their way to Ross’ doorstep.

“Oh Francis!” Ann exclaimed the moment he entered the sitting room. “Please sit, I’ll have Hill fetch you some strong tea - Please-” She would hear no argument as she bullied him into a chair by the fire, and Francis had never been inclined to contradict her. She was warm, kind, beautiful, and adored Francis because Ross did, with never a word of judgment about his rough manners or his poor prospects. Nor did she allow him his foolishness: Ross might have comforted him after the first refused proposal, but it was Ann who sat him down after the second and made it perfectly clear that such behavior would only lead to distress in the lady, and humiliation within himself.

“Francis?” Ross entered the sitting room like a man awakened from a dream. With his normally impeccable hair bunched to one side of his head, Francis wondered if that wasn’t too far from the truth. “Were we supposed to meet this evening?”

“No,” Francis shook his head. “I didn’t mean to disturb you, I only had a bit of information to share with you, and I’ll be on my way.”

“Nonsense, you must stay a while! We’ll get the bad business out of the way and then do a bit of enjoying ourselves - we’ve not had a visit from you in some time, it would be a shame to spoil it all with talk of nothing but work.” Francis smiled, took a long sip drink that was offered and briefed Ross on the nature of his investigation throughout the week. Ross seemed encouraged by the direction, asked thoughtful questions, and when it was all done leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers, a worried look upon his brow.

“Did you see the papers today?”

“No, I’m afraid I didn’t have the opportunity, has something else happened?”

“Nothing like that. Just an article about the case - the nature of the investigation.”

“Oh?” Where was Ross heading with this line of inquiry? There were articles about the case every day, ranging from the sensible to the completely outlandish, one more should not make a difference.

“It seems that someone within Scotland Yard has been in contact with the Times - an _unhappy_ someone, and they’ve taken it upon themselves to reveal some things of a departmental nature.” Francis bristled.

“If they’ve sabotaged the investigation, then -”

“We’re looking into the source. But - _your_ name was mentioned, specifically, as a consultant on the case, and it does trouble me greatly.”

“Why is that?”

“It - it makes you a bit of a target, does it not?”

“This killer doesn’t have any connection to his victims, I shouldn’t think he’d try to knife me to stop an investigation he _must_ know would continue past my death.”

“That’s the Crozier I know, nothing but practical in the face of danger,” Ross laughed.

“I hardly think I’m in _danger_ , you worry after me like a mother hen.”

“Better than Ann worrying after you like a bullhound.” Francis chuckled at the image of the beautiful but diminutive Lady Ann houding after him. “Don’t laugh, she’ll be quite cross with both of us if you should find yourself down a dark alley with the Turnback Killer at one end.”

“Ah, she would grow into it soon enough, there’d be no one to steal you away for an evening of spirits, and she should have you sober and all to herself.”

“I should care for neither, if it comes at the expense of your health,” Ann chided as she entered the room. “You men are dreadful, I thought this was to be a social visit.”

“We are sociably discussing the implications of -”

“You are doing nothing of the kind! Now, gentleman, I’ll here no more talk of this - this Killer. Why don’t you tell us about the _Magpie_ , instead?”

“The Magpie?”

“Indeed! You never did fill me in on how you happened to recover Mr. Mirth’s dress.”

What could Francis say? That when he dove for the thief the man wriggled out of his dress as easy as an actress in her boudoir between scenes?

“He must have left it on the rooftop,” Francis found himself saying. “I found it there upon one the the chimneys, blowing gently in the wind.”

“Perhaps he discovered it was simply too unwieldy to flee in?” Ross ventured. Francis was forced to remember the surety of James’ steps, the grace with which he ran along the skyline, silhouetted by the moon.

“That seems most likely, yes.” What was he doing? Lying to his friend - for whom? For the Magpie’s benefit? For his own? But he was in too deep now to recant the statements.

“How did he look in the hall?” Ann asked. “Several of my friends claim to have seen him, though I’m sure they’re just putting me on.”

“Well enough to pass himself off as a model, I suppose,” Francis said, evenly, as sweat broke out on his palms.

“Now I must insist _you_ stop your line of questioning, wife of mine,” James interrupted. “No more talk of killers _or_ magpies or models or dresses or _work_ for the rest of the evening.”

“Very well, _husband_ ,” Ann groaned with an overdramatic theatricality. “But we must discuss something, and I insist it should be the absolutely riotous version of Twelfth Night that James very begrudgingly escorted me to not three days ago.”

With a warm fire and the glow of Ross and Ann’s affection for each other, Francis did his best to put the frustrations of the day behind him. Ann left for bed around midnight, and there was nothing to stop them from imbibing too much of Ross’ good spirits, their increasingly loud in their reminisces of the past keeping the household from their sleep until Francis found himself growing too familiar in his thoughts, and slammed himself shut like a shutter before a storm. He was ill at ease and out of place in this home of James and Ann Ross, and his skin itched to be gone. He made quick goodbyes and excuses too his friend, who was rather confused with Francis’ sudden turn of character. Francis could not _flee_ from the house, but he could walk away very gruffly and rapidly, could pretend his melancholy was - just the night, just the alcohol, just - just the rememberings of better times.

Francis walked the long way home.

The evening with the Rosses had been a mistake. It did nothing for the state of his sobriety and had reminded him of things he did not have, nor ever would, and he only hoped that the bracing cold would do well to thin the whiskey in his blood, just enough so Jopson wouldn’t have to clean up the mess Francis left behind in the morning. The lad had been dealing with enough this week without having to right the overturned table and chairs again, or obliged to reassemble documents strewn haphazardly about the room.

He deemed the venture mostly successful - at least the lights had stopped glimmering as if there were more than one.

“I thought I told you to start taking new routes,” a voice called out from behind him. “Have you no sense of self preservation at all?” Francis smothered the smile that sprang to his lips at once. He would know that voice anywhere -

He turned sharply on his heel to come face to face (or face to mask, as it were) with James. The Magpie was dressed - not as he usually was, Francis noted with some surprise. His coat was rather more function than form, and even had a patch at the elbow where it seemed the moths had been at it, though his boots gleamed with a haughty sort of shine as ever.

“Are you the Turnback killer after all then?” Francis asked, almost wishing it were true. “Come to end me?” What would he have to worry about then? No killer to find, no empty flat to go home to, no Magpie taunting him on his walks or in his thoughts -

“What a terrible thing to say, Francis! I thought we knew each other better than that!”

“He’s a sailor,” Francis spat. “You were one too.”

“I was an _officer_ ,” James replied, eyes widening when he realized he had given himself away so quickly.

“Oh an _officer_ then,” Francis mocked. “Not above robbing the lords and ladies of their valuable curios but violence is a bridge too far, eh?”

“What that killer does isn’t just _violence_ , it’s - it’s a nightmare.” James looked honestly distraught, and Francis considered taking pity on him. “It’s _butchery_ , Francis. I knew the -” he stopped. “I’ve read the papers,” he finished, lamely. Francis wondered at the first bit, what he had _almost_ said, _almost_ given away, and filed it away to be considered for later. James lifted his arms up, as if to hold himself against the cold, before letting them drop back down at his sides. “And now thanks to the damn _Times_ today the _whole_ city knows you’re after him. _He_ knows you’re after him.” It was the second time in the night he’d heard such sentiment, and while he could tolerate Ross and Ann looking after his wellbeing, it was inconceivable that the Magpie should care one whit! This was - was ridicule, and while he couldn’t see the shape of the jest in his state he would be damned before he would stand for it.

“Why on earth should you care, _James_?” Francis sneered. “ _James_. Would be in your best interest if I was stabbed in the dark on the way home, bled out in the gutter, I should think. Who would catch you then?”

“No one, I suppose,” James said, in a manner which implied that the idea did not cheer him at all. Francis was too muddled to identify the emotion that flicked across the Magpie’s face before it was gone. “I should be left utterly to my own devices.” James sighed, an exhausted, forlorn sound Francis recognized well from too many of his own lonely nights, a sound that was unlike the dashing thief with whom Francis has become acquainted.

_What’s wrong with you?_ Francis thought, blinking into the haze of a streetlamp. _You shouldn’t know how to sigh like that, you shouldn’t be talking to me like this._ But Francis said nothing, and the silence stretched out between, while the city moved around them, with distant, discordant noises, the fog that hung about the streets, crept along the window panes. When he turned back, James was closer, so close that if he wanted, Francis could reach out and grab the sleeve of his coat, the lapel at his throat, slide his hand -

“Where is my dress, Francis?” James asked, suddenly. Crozier shook his head, like a man coming out from under ether.

“ _Your_ dress? I rather thought it was Mr. Mirth’s dress.”

“It was my right to abscond with it. I suppose you’ve already handed it over to Scotland Yard and those constables returned it to its _rightful owner_ after prying off a suitable bribe of diamonds for themselves. They have no respect for lovely things at all.” James huffed, as if he truly did regret the loss of the dress, and was not grateful that abandoning it had aided in his escape. “I suppose I must content myself with another, though I fear I’ll never wear its like again. Alas, to have but an audience of one.” Francis mulled over his response, testing the weight of the words on his tongue before he allowed them forth.

“I thought you looked well,” he muttered, and regretted it instantly, waited for the inevitable laughter, the piteous curl of lip.

But James’ face did not collapse into a riotous mix of amusement and pity, as Francis anticipated. He looked almost - well - almost _pleased_ to be paid such a compliment, even by a man such as Francis. More vanity, then, not to mind from which well the fountain of praise sprang.

“Oh, you thought I looked _well_ , did you?” James said, slyly. “I suppose if my audience must be only one, it should be the single man in London who at least makes an _attempt_ to keep up with me. All those dashing young constables and yet the only one who was even the _shadow_ of my equal was a distinguished veteran as yourself.” _You’re spry for an old man_ , Francis heard, and reared back at once.

“I wouldn’t have had to exert myself if you had surrendered, instead of hopping about like a trained baboon in twenty pounds of silk and diamonds.”

“Indeed, you thoroughly impressed me with your _exertions_ ,” James replied, ignoring the insult entirely. “Stamina of a man half your age, I’d swear it on -”

“Why have you come, James?” Francis was suddenly exhausted by the conversation, exhausted by trying to follow the endless circles of conversation which seemed to trip him up at the most inopportune moments, by the vague sense of guilt he felt at not at least making an attempt at capturing the man. But it was well past two in the morning, and Francis wasn’t sure his hands wouldn’t shake if he tried to raise them any higher than his hips - to grasp, or clutch, or hold, or _whatever_ his hands intended on doing. “If you’d like to turn yourself in, do it in the morning. I’ve no doubt you know where I live.”

“No, no, they’ll be no apprehension tonight, or tomorrow, for that matter” James said, stepping backwards. “I only - Well.” He worried the inside of his cheek, unsure of himself, or at least attempting to project the sense that he was. (The Magpie, unsure of himself, what a lark! Who else could claim to have seen that side of the thief? To whom did James return to at night? Did they know? Did they know what kind of creature they held in their arms, lay with in the tangle of their shared bed? Or _was_ there even anyone - but No. James was made for an audience, for - for _adoration_ , and surely there must be _someone_. It would be against nature, otherwise.) “Though I'm surprised you’ve not made a single attempt this evening.”

“Well, you aren’t - aren’t fleeing the scene, are you?” Francis surmised. “And I’m too old and tired to go bounding after you along the rooftops.”

“I seem to remember a man who _bounded after me_ quite well several weeks ago, but, as you like it. Just -” He tapped his foot, considered the stars hidden behind the clouds above them. “Just don’t try and bound after the Turnback Killer by yourself. He’s not _nearly_ as nice as I am.”

Francis wanted to come back with a witty riposte, but was again struck by that strange sense of deja vu - could feel a memory worrying at the edge of his memory like a dog searching for a cache of bones. But again it was gone as soon as it had come.

“I’m too old for a nursemaid, Magpie.”

“Nonsense, everyone needs a good looking after.” _Who looks after you?_ Francis bit back. He rolled his eyes and barked a bitter laugh, but James’ smile was undeterred.

“Until my next caper, then.”

James made no grand exit, not this time. He didn’t sweep into a waiting hansom, or twirl his tripled cape and vanish before Francis’ eyes. He merely turned on his heel and continued back the way he had come. Francis watched him go, knowing he could still correct his errors, could pursue James and tackle him to the ground, call for the constable he knew had been “taking a break” from his beat for the last two hours in the nearest public house, see the Magpie behind bars.

James was almost at the corner of the street, would vanish from sight in an instant, but at the last moment he turned back to see Francis staring after him. He raised his arm in a goodbye, and smiled.

Francis felt a silly and stupid feeling bubbling in his chest that had nothing to do with the whiskey at all, and felt sober enough to attend to the cast of moonlight along the foggy streets as he made his way back home.

* * *

_Oh, you thought I looked well, did you?_

“Are you alright sir?”

“Hrm?”

_Indeed, you thoroughly impressed me with your exertions._

“It’s only you’ve hardly touched your breakfast.”

_Everyone needs a good looking after._

“I’m fine, Jopson. I’ll be going out soon enough.”

“Of course, sir.” Jopson inclined his head and left Crozier to contemplate the uncracked nature of his morning egg, the toast left to cool, unbuttered and uneaten.

It was - it was - Well, Francis was having a great deal of difficulty dismissing how the words had impressed on him. No matter what game the Magpie was playing, what mockery he was making of the detective, Francis remained unable to work himself up into a proper fury over it.

He needed to get out of his flat - and he desperately needed a drink.

Francis almost ran right into Blanky on the front steps, who staggered backward with his hand still raised to ring the bell. After a perfunctory round of swift apologies, Blanky quickly got down to the business that had brought him to Francis’ door.

“Frank, I think I’ve got a lead on this Turnback thing.” The rest of the street seemed to fade into the background as the whole of Francis’ attention became focused on Blanky’s words.

“What is it?”

“One of those Navy men you told me to track down - some Lieutenant Irvine or Irving - Anyway, I visited him yesterday evening, says he might have something.”

“You mean -”

“He says he’s got a story to tell about a man he sailed with some years back, few things about it that never sat right with him.”

“Did he tell you the man’s name?”

“‘Course. Says his name was Hickey. Cornelius Hickey.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Halfway through now, things are going to pick up a bit from here on out! Throw some speculation at me here [@soft-october-night](https://soft-october-night.tumblr.com/)!


	5. Come on Sorrow, Take Your Own Advice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! Had to rework this chapter a bit!

By noon, the man, Lieutenant Irving, nervously perched on a chair in his own rooms, while Crozier and Blanky sat across from him in dining chairs that saw not a spot of care since Edward’s reign. Blanky held a book open on his knee, scribbling notes in what could perhaps be called handwriting, if one was not particular about actually being able to read it later.

“Go ahead, lad,” Crozier encouraged. “Yesterday you told Mr. Blanky, today you can tell me.”

“About Mr. Hickey?” Irving’s face soured at the very mention of the name, and Francis arched an eyebrow.

“The very same.” Irving nodded, and settled himself in his chair, with all the formality of a man providing a statement at an inquest.

“I marked him from the beginning. I knew -” Irving took a deep breath. “I knew something was wrong when we first set out,” Irving began. His hands drummed on the table, his eyes flashed again and again towards the door and windows. “He called himself Cornelius Hickey, you see, only -”

“Only…” Francis persuaded.

“Only I _saw_ Cornelius Hickey before, and this man _was not him._ ” Blanky and Francis shared a look across the table. “I’d seen Hickey on board the ship the day before, stowing his things, but the man who showed up when we set out was - it wasn’t like he’d just grown a beard, or changed his hair, it was a _entirely different man_.”

“What did the man look like?” Blanky asked. “The real one, not the one who showed up later.” Francis took a long draught from his flask and almost missed the disapproving twitch at the corner of his friend’s mouth. Let him sit there and make faces. They were on the trail of a killer, Crozier was entitled to -

“I’m not sure, it’s been so long. I can only think of how the other man was different. The one who came after was - short, wiry, the man before - he was tall - taller than me, and broad besides. And - the eyes.”

“The eyes?”

“Yeah - the other one’s eyes were - blue maybe, or green. Something light. This one - brown but - cold. Like there was nothing behind them.” Francis forced his face to remain composed. The last victim attributed to the killer, who had been found in London just before the five year gap, was tall, broad, blue eyed. No identification on him. There was talk of his being a navy man, something about the calluses on his hands, but no men turned up missing from their manifests, no weeping widow or mother ever came forward to identify him, and the trail went cold.

But if a sailor had been changing ships and then been _replaced by an imposter_ -

“Why didn’t you say anything to the captain at the time?” Blanky prodded. Irving shook his head, ashamed.

“I thought I would sound mad - the man who says he’s Cornelius Hickey isn’t. Didn't want to be seen as someone who paid - paid too much attention to the men under his command. I kept my own eye on him for the first part of the journey, and when nothing seemed amiss I - I thought it was just - mistaken identity, or something like that.”

“But something changed, during the voyage?” Francis picked up the thread where Blanky dropped it.

“It did,” Irving nodded. “That was a long, hot, boring time. He sailed with us for the whole two years - mostly in the Mediterranean and the Indian ocean. We were - just pirate hunters, security forces against nothing, making circles. Shore leave at every port, the men making a nuisance of themselves, the officers not much better.” Irving sniffed, offended by even speaking of such drunken debauchery.

“Do you remember anything unusual when you would come into port? Any of the men acting strange?”

“Not at first. Everyone always took shore leave - barring punishment, of course,” he amended, looking at Crozier as if he expected the man to glare at him with a captain’s ire. “It wasn’t until Bombay I thought something might be - well, that something might be _wrong_.”

“Bombay,” Crozier said, thoughtfully. Beside him, Blanky rifled through Francis’ notes on the telegrams he received from various ports across the globe, found the appropriate page.

“Three and a half years ago, yes?” Francis asked. Irving nodded in miserable confirmation.

“I stayed on board that night, reading. Bombay held no interest for me, none of the cities did. Very late, closer to morning than night, I heard singing along the docks, and I went up on deck to see who would be coming back in such a state. I thought to give the man a reprimand.” He again looked to Crozier for approval, who merely nodded and gestured for him to continue. “It was Hickey, or the man who called himself Hickey. He was covered head to toe in - it looked like mud, black, black mud, all down his front. I called out to him and he smiled back. Said he had been pushed down in the dirt during a bit of rough housing. I told him he best clean up and get to his berth, lest the captain see him. But sir he passed me by, and didn’t smell like any dirt I’d ever -” Irving faltered. He passed a hand over his brow and shook his head, trying to compose himself.

“Did he smell like -” Blanky began, then realized his error. “What did he smell like?”

“Blood, sir,” Irving said in a soft, almost imperceptible voice. “Hickey smelled like blood.”

Bombay - where a man had been found the morning after the _Lancer_ set sail for Calcutta, his throat slit, like all the others.

“What happened next?” Irving tilted his head to the side, lost in his memories. “I brought it up to the captain. Hickey’s clothes were searched but of course no bloody clothes were found. We sailed to Sydney, he was transferred to a different ship. Nothing else happened, he - he was as dedicated to his work and sinless as I’d ever seen him during those last few months, and I was - I was watching him, making sure.” Francis nodded.

“It all fits, Frank,” Blanky muttered to him, so low it would be a miracle if Irving could hear them from where he sat. “From 1880to 1885, anytime there was a murder, you can bet the _Lancer_ put into port.”

“Do you remember the ship he transferred to?” Francis asked, but Irving shook his head.

“Not at all. I was just relieved to see him gone. He - he unsettled me, sir. Unsettled some of the others too. We talked about it, after he had gone.”

“You haven’t seen him since then, I take it?”

“No - well, not until recently.”

Francis whipped his head around to stare at Irving.

“What do you mean, not until recently?”

“I thought that’s what this was about?” Irving looked confused, turned to Blanky for an explanation. “I just saw him back in town, thought he was under some kind of court martial - ”

“Where did you see him? Are you certain it was him?”

“When I was walking home from supper!” Irving sputtered. “About three days ago! And yes, I’m certain, I’m not sure I could ever forget such a face.”

“He’s in town!” Francis exclaimed. “He’s here!”

* * *

A telegram to the naval office later secured Cornelius Hickey’s address, registered just three weeks ago with the navy. After a brief dialogue, in which he considered all options from calling Ross and a battalion of constables to knocking the man’s door down himself, he thought it would be best to handle the situation a bit more delicately. The Turnback Killer was dangerous, and if Irving’s recollections could be relied upon, it would be foolish to charge in making accusations.

So that’s how Francis came to be standing in a dingy stairwell, knocking on the door of a flat in Ratcliff, wondering if he were about to come face to face with the Turnback Killer himself. He considered the shine on the door, the polished handle, so at odds with the rest of the building, as if the owner had taken special care to stand out, to show that he was not of this place, though he happened to live here. But footsteps were moving from within, and then the door opened.

“Can I help you?” The man who poked his face out into the hallway could be none but Cornelius Hickey. Irving had been almost too detailed in his description, and this small, skinny man who smiled at him like a rat who had stolen a meat pie fit that description precisely.

“I hope you can,” Francis began. “I’m looking for Corneluis Hickey.”

“I suppose I might know him,” the man drawled. “What’s it about?”

“A missing persons case,” Francis lied. He made up the whole story on the way over, pulled from the case’s own research. “There’s a sailor gone missing from the _Meteor_ , a Mr. Nadler, we’re asking anyone from his old crew if they have any information on his whereabouts.”

“And you are?”

“Detective Francis Crozier.” He considered giving a false name, but there might be any spark of awareness, or a sudden defense, in Hickey’s eyes at his real name.

However, the only change in his face was that his smile grew, if possible, even wider.

“Mr. _Crozier_ ,” Hickey repeated. “I know of you. I _am_ Cornelius Hickey, but you know how it is, can never be too careful who you tell your name to these days.”

“Of course.”

“Lots of shady people about. But if you’re only looking for an old crewmate of mine, that would be a different story.”

“Indeed.”

“Saw your name in the paper the other day, Monday, I think?”

“Its's quite possible,” Francis replied, and didn't give anything further.

“It was an article about...” Hickey's eye's flicked toward the ceiling, miming a man trying to recall a fiddly detail. “It was about the Turnback Killer case. Terrible business, that.”

“Dreadful.”

“Say, now, our missing Mr. Nadler he wouldn't have anything to do with -”

“No, nothing like that. The man’s just gone missing, family hired me to track him down.”

“Mr. Nadler, you say?” Hickey again raised his eyes towards the ceiling, searching for his memories of the man (or putting on the pretense of it). “Never would have thought him the type to up and go. Have you searched down the opium dens? It’s where most of these poor blighters end up. Couldn’t see Mr. Nadler there, though. Not him.” Mr. Nadler wasn’t anywhere _near_ an opium den, or even missing for that matter. Hr was on a ship headed for Cape Horn, if the manifests were correct.

But Hickey wouldn’t know anything about that.

“What kind of man was he?” Francis pressed, if only to keep him talking.

“Quiet, unassuming. Did his job. We weren’t _close_ , if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I wasn’t.” Hickey chuckled, though that smile never reached any higher than the bottom half of his face.

“How is the investigation going?”

“Into Mr. Nadler’s disappearance? It’s still in the early stages, yet.”

“I meant the Turnback Killer.” Hickey laughed again. “Though I’m sure you get that question _constantly_.” Hickey brought them round to the Killer again. That _was_ rather interesting, but not evidence of guilt one way or the other.

“I can’t tell you anything that couldn’t be read in the papers,” Francis replied with a shake of his head.

“Ah, unfortunate.”

“Scotland Yard is doing all they can.”

“I’m sure they are.”

“If you remember anything else -”

“I’ll be certain to contact you.” Francis handed him a he’d made for just these sorts of interviews. The address on the card was not one where he resided, but where mail and messages could be safely directed.

“Much appreciated, Mr. Hickey.” Francis raised his hand, and turned, making ready to depart.

“Oh, Detective?” Francis paused.

“Yes?”

“You might want to talk to Lieutenant Irving. He served with the both of us on board the _Lancer,_ I saw him in town just a few days ago.”

“I’ll do just that, Mr. Hickey. Thanks for the tip.”

“You’re very welcome, Detective Crozier.”

* * *

Francis’ hope for the conversation was that Hickey would give something away, make a mistake, so that Francis would be able to take the outline of the Killer he had sketched out in his head and fit the edges around the shape of Cornelius Hickey. He hadn’t - Hickey hadn't given anything away - but there was something strange about the interaction Francis struggled to put into words. Hickey was - unsettling? Almost too at ease? Overly interested in the Turnback Killer, without a doubt. It hadn’t been successful in the manner he’d wished, but according to Blanky, who made wild gesticulations at him across his own dining table, it had been a risk of immense proportions.

“Just invite the killer for _tea_ next time, why don’t you?” Blanky raged. It was the third hour of this same discussion, and what started as pointed questions had now developed into scathing condemnations. “Why the hell didn’t you contact Ross, you _said_ you would contact Ross -” Had he? Francis couldn’t quite remember. Sleep had not come easy, not for the last week, and then only with the aid of his faithful flask.

“I didn’t give him my _actual address_ -”

“No, you stopped short of handing him the knife yourself - Christ it’s like you’re _asking_ him to _murder you_ -”

“We don’t even know if he’s our man!” Francis topped off his glass with the last of his whiskey. It was too much, and the amber liquid spilled over the sides of the glass and onto the varnished wood. “Irving could have made the whole thing up, could -”

“You checked those manifests as well as I, the timeline lines up _exactly_ with the pattern of the murders abroad -”

“The killer might be _Irving himself_ , didn’t you think of that?”

“I _did_ , and _you_ were the one who told me that the cross references didn’t line up for the last two and a half _years_ so it _couldn’t be_ Irving -”

“- And so _what_ if he did figure out where I live, the murders were _never_ personal -”

“We don’t know that either!” Blanky slammed his hand on the table. “Who knows! Each and every victim could might all be people who cut in front of Mr. Hickey at the fucking bakery, why don’t we get out there and _investigate the connections_ -”

“ _You_ get out there and investigate, _I’ll_ -”

“You’ll keep drinking like a fucking _fish_ is what you’ll do -”

“Get _out_ -” Francis rose to his feet, his chair slamming to the ground behind him. He teetered off balance, and braced his hand against the table in front of him. The gas lamps on the wall swam in his vision.

“I’m _going_.” Blanky shot back. “Though you’ve already gone far enough for the both of us.”

“Fuck _you_.”

Without another word, Blanky walked out and slammed the door.

Francis raged about the room, ranting to himself about presumptuous men who called themselves his friends, about killers waiting for unsuspecting victims on the street, about a pair of dark eyes and a crooked smile below a black mask that made his chest feel like it had been blown clean through by a cannonball. He paced around his flat, flitted from one occupation to another, lay in his bed for twenty minutes before rising up in a fit of pique over a joke James Ross had made seven _years_ ago. He finally broke into his own liquor cabinet (Jopson had taken the key home with him _again_ ), dug out all his case notes on the Turnback Killer, spread them out on the floor, and started arranging and rearranging his research until the first tendrils of dawn slipped in through the window. He snapped at Jopsons the moment he arrived, and all his steward's gentle persuasion in the world could not coax him to take the slightest bit of tea or even a crumb of toast.

He might have stayed there for the next three days, mulling over his case notes, tormenting Jopson, shooting dark looks at the Magpie case file and its slow slide down the back of the chair cushion in between taking sips from a teacup that had abandoned the pretense of tea altogether.

But then they found Irving in the street the next day.

* * *

“Fifteen stab wounds in his chest,” Ross said, head propped up by an exhausted hand. “That’s the only difference. His throat was slit, he was found outside his rooms around midnight. No strange sounds, no witnesses. If it wasn’t for those wounds I would say it’s almost definitely our Killer.” Francis sat in the only chair in Ross' office, while constables fumbled and shouted at each other outside the door.

“Yes,” Francis muttered, hushed. “It seems - if what Irving told us was true, at least - that the killer may have gotten more - personal, in his choice of victim.”

“Christ, Frank, why didn’t you say anything?”

“It was the middle of a case! I don’t tell you every single witness I interview -”

“This wasn’t a witness, it may have been our _killer_ -”

“I was trying to be _careful_!”

“Careful - see where your being careful got Lieutenant Irving!” Francis recoiled as if Ross slapped him, and his friends' face fell.

“Christ, Frank, I -”

“No,” Francis shook his head, “You're right I should have -” Should have - there were _hundreds_ of things he should have done, would have done, if he was able to get some goddamn sleep, if he could get himself out from under the haze he'd been living in for weeks. No, not weeks. It was longer than that, wasn't it? Since Sophia? Earlier?

He didn’t know.

“Just - please,” Ross’ words brought Francis back from the chasm his thoughts were digging. “I’ll send some men ‘round to pick up this Hickey character, see if we can’t find some evidence, even if he’s gone to ground. In the meantime let’s get a description up, see if we can’t find someone who will recognize him. We keep moving forward.” Francis nodded.

“We’ll get him.”

Francis was not surprised when Hickey failed to turn up at home when Ross’ men came to call, and none of his neighbors knew where he had gone. His rooms looked as if no one had ever lived there, cleared of any personal items whatsoever, without even a burned note in the fireplace or a bit of rubbage to sort through that may have served as a clue.

With the shame of his failure burning a hole through his brain, Francis conducted his own investigation a day later, when Ross had given him leave to do so, and his personal inquiries proved slightly more successful.

“It was just terrible, all those men going through poor Mr. Hickey’s things,” the elderly neighbor shook her head and sighed. “Always a pleasure he was, sorry to see him go.”

“Yes,” Crozier replied. He was playing the role of an old sailor, come to look up a member of his old crew. “Absolutely dreadful.”

“He always said it might come to this, his father’s debuts, you know, he was always worried they would come back to haunt him.”

“Oh?” Whatever lie Hickey had fed the poor woman about his tribulations, she had bought into it completely.

“And now look, poor dear is driven out of his own home, his friends can’t find him -”

“Perhaps I could leave a note with you, and you could pass it along?”

“Me? Oh no sir, you’re better off looking up that young man of his - now what was his name? Gibbons? No, no, that wasn’t it -” Francis, who had spent the last week and a half memorizing lists of crewmen until his eyes had gone blurry, resisted shouting. There had been a name on the last ship Hickey sailed on -

“Perhaps Gibson, ma’am?” Her eyes lit up and she clapped her hands together in delights.

“Oh that’s it! Lovely Mr. Gibson, now there was another nice young man. You could leave a message with him, I’m sure Mr. Hickey hasn’t strayed too far from _him_.” She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively, and Crozier had to fight through several different reactions to reach a tepid smile.

Within an hour, Francis Crozier was staring into the face of a bleary eyed man who was most certainly not Hickey. Gibson’s face was pressed between the wall and the door, and Francis could not see around him without making himself quite suspicious indeed.

“Hickey’s not here,” Gibson said, flatly. “He threw me over and walked out yesterday.”

“Do you know where he’s gone?”

“No. and I don’t much care, either.”

“If you see him, please let us know,” Francis handed him one of the cards he had made up for just such an opportunity, which stated that he was a special sort of servant of her Majesty’s navy. “You can reach us here.”

“Won’t he just contact the naval offices?”

“This is an urgent matter, Mr. Gibson. Surely you understand that some discretion is required?” Gibson appeared unimpressed, and with a shrug he shut the door in Francis’ face. The moment the door was shut Francis rushed down the stairs, hoping - but Jopson, who had been watching Mr. Gibson’s windows from the street waiting for someone to make a run for it, only shook his head.

“I’m sorry Sir,” he lamented. “If Hickey _is_ there, he didn’t run when you knocked.”

“Well, keep at it,” Francis commanded. “This is the only lead we might have, and if Hickey’s here, I want to know about it.” He fired off a telegram to Ross, asking that he put a regular patrol down on the street, and recruited some of the local boys who were always eager to “do a bit of spywork” for him (especially if it was paid) to help Jopson keep watch.

He made his way back home, miserable enough to crawl back inside a bottle and stay there until the guilt and shame over what happened was washed away, like a bloodstain from a shirt. Irving was dead, Hickey had run off, and if Francis had been - if he’d been more - He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and groaned. Blanky was right. Ross was right. He had to stop. He _would_ , he would stop after they caught Hickey. He would take a break, lock himself in a dark cupboard and stay there until he’d sweated out every last _drop_ of alcohol but - after. _After_ the killer was behind bars, then he would stop. He would take just a little less each day, plan it out, buy a few more bottles, ration them out over the month and when they were gone - that would be it. He would be free, he could get on with dragging himself through each and every exhausting day without a drop of the pure to help him .

After the killer was caught.

Then he would change.

He reached for the bottle.

Not two hours later, a pair of feet came pounding up the stairs and were soon accompanied by a frantic knocking. Francis scrambled to the door and one of the boys working with Jopson - George, Francis thought - came tumbling into the room.

“Mr. Jopson sent me, sir!” George sputtered. “He says to tell you that Mr. Hickey is still in Gibson’s flat, he’s seen him going just this evening, sir-” Francis had grabbed his hat and coat as he stumbled out the door before the boy was even through with his sentence.

“Go get Mr. Blanky,” he snapped at the boy, pushing a handful of coins into George’s hands without bothering to heed the denominations at all. “Tell him to meet me at Fairclough, in Whitechapel. If he gives you any trouble tell him I said -” Francis ran his tongue along the top row of his teeth. “Tell him he was right, but this may be our chance to catch him.” George nodded, having absorbed perhaps half of what Francis had said, and he sent the boy off with Blanky’s address before he pitched himself into a hansom.

He found Jopson almost exactly where he’d been left, heard his report about Hickey’s movements and sent him to find the constable Ross had ordered to patrol the street and explain the situation.

“And then go find Ross yourself,” Francis ordered. “Tell him to bring a whole platoon of his constables.” There would be no more mistakes.

“So we’re just going to wait around until something happens, Frank?” Blanky asked when he arrived, still in a sour mood but unable to conceal the excitement in his eyes at the thought of catching the man at last. Francis hoped the weight of their recent argument would be flung aside in the necessity of cooperation.

“At least until Hickey comes back.”

“And what if he doesn’t?”

“Jopson said he’d left with nothing but the clothes on his back, would be rather difficult to cut and run with nothing, but not impossible -”

“Did you tell Ross this time?”

“As a matter of fact I have, sent the constable and Jospon after him, just in case.” Blanky nodded his assent and they spent the next twenty minutes discussing strategies should Hickey appear before the calvary arrived, while Francis taking sips from a bottle he swore to Blanky was medicinal - to stop his hands from shaking.

They didn’t have long to wait. Not even a half hour before they arrived at the scene, a large gaggle of men and women - laughing and singing bawdy songs - began their meander down the street. Francis scanned each face in the crowd, like he had scanned each who came before them but this time - this time there was a man who walked at the heart of the throng, with a pointed face and an easy smile that never reached his eyes.

“Mr. Hickey?” Francis called ahead of them, and the man instinctively turned his head to the side.

 _Got you_.

Hickey realized his mistake at once, and protests arose from the crowd as Hickey shoved them aside, trying to make room for his escape. He tore down the street, and Francis threw the flask aside and took off at a run, Blanky right beside him.

But Francis had overestimated the effect of the whiskey on him, and too soon he could feel him energy flagging. Blanky so outpaced him that he did not notice when Francis tripped over his own feet and slammed into a lamppost, and barreled on ahead, shouting for Hickey to stop running. Francis groaned in pain, tried to right himself, got caught up by the lights like a fucking moth in the night, and what did it matter anyway, they were never going to catch him and now that he knew he was on them perhaps he _would_ do as the Magpie suggested one very late evening and knife Francis on his way home and then there wouldn’t be anything - anything at all to wonder or feel shame over or -

A horrible, twisted scream rang through the night.

_Blanky._

Francis furiously wiped the sweat out of his eyes as he sprinted toward the source of the sound, fought through the small crowd that had gathered around something on the ground. He found Blanky there, blood pouring from a wound in his leg, and as Francis tried to staunch the bleeding he heard a voice calling for a doctor - for a cab, for help - and was horrified to realize that the voice was his own.

* * *

Later, after a wild ride in a hansom back to Blanky’s flat, his children bustling all about, the arrival of the doctor, Mrs. Blanky about to beat him about the head with her rolling pin for causing such a fuss while Blanky groaned and tried to chase her out of the room, Francis sat very quietly outside the door. They had been lucky, this time. The wound was deep, but, barring infection, Blanky would live.

It was the drink, Francis knew. The drink had nearly gotten one of his oldest friends killed, had prevented him from apprehending the Turnback Killer, had doomed who knew how many more to the man’s ravages, had prevented justice for the long line of victims stretching back over five years. It may have cost him even more. He tried to look back in his timeline, see where the mistakes could have been righted, where he might have -

“Francis?” It was Ross, white as a sheet. He wondered how Ross knew to come here, what his friend knew and didn’t, but couldn’t bring himself to ask the questions, “Frank, are you alright?”

“No,” he replied, and could not help the tear that trickled down his face at the admission. Ross made to comfort him, perhaps brace a hand against his shoulder, but Francis held up his hand. He deserved neither comfort nor pity.

“Will you accompany me back to my rooms, James?” he asked, in a small and miserable whisper. “There is something I must discuss with you.”

Upon returning to his rooms, Francis accepted the glass of whiskey that a trembling Jopson provided for him. His last drink. He sipped it gingerly. Shouldn’t the last drink taste different? As a mark of its finality? It tasted just like every morning, noon and night for the last few years, it tasted like Blanky’s screams and blood on the cobblestone and fifteen stab wounds in a young man’s chest.

“Gentlemen,” he began, and arrested Jopson’s attempted departure. “I must ask something of you that I am sick at heart to do, but there is no escaping it any longer. I cannot go on as I am, and I will not be able to care for myself. Ross, you’ll have to find him without me.” All the afters, all the laters, all the “I can stop when I need tos” had been nothing but lies. He wouldn’t have stopped. He would have found some other excuse to keep it up, some other reason he needed the stuff. But there were no more excuses, no more reasons. Blanky had almost - “You’ll have Blanky and your men and the description of Hickey, I trust you can find the man without my help.” Ross made a sound of protest, but Crozier held up a hand. “I am useless to you like this, but I…” His hands shook, and he gripped the table to try and wrestle them back to his control. “I _may_ not be, forever. I may become better.” This last was said so low that Ross had to bend toward him to hear properly. Francis blinked, imagining, of all things, emeralds against a slender neck, a rich laugh along a rooftop on a starry night. “I may become better for everyone. Jopson-” His steward started at his name, but squared his shoulders, ready to hear his orders. “I would not ask this of you, and would be more than happy to secure the services of -”

“No!” Jopson cried, affronted at the very thought. “No, sir, I mean. I couldn’t - It wouldn’t be right, some stranger traipsing through these rooms while you were ill.”

“I will not be myself,” Francis reminded him. “I’ll say terrible things, I won’t -”

“Stop it, sir,” Jopson said, softly. “Please. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before. It’ll be alright. Only…”

“Only?”

“Might I tell Ned, sir? He will worry, otherwise.” Francis broke into a hysterical sort of chuckle.

“I don’t see a way around it.”

“Thank you, sir. He’ll be -” Jopson swallowed. “He’ll be happy to help, in whatever way he can.”

“Are you sure there is nothing else I can do for you, Frank?” Ross’ eyes were dewey. Francis blamed it on the fire. “I feel dreadful, just leaving you here like this.”

“Ross I don’t -” He steadied himself with a breath. “You’ve seen me though enough humiliations. Let me preserve my dignity this once?” After a moment’s hesitation, Ross nodded.

“Jopson?”

“Yes sir?”

“Go to the gun cabinet. Take every single weapon out and store it at your flat. James will help you.” Jopson’s eyes were wide, but there was a hard set to his jaw as he nodded.

“It will be a hard few weeks, gentlemen,” he said again, staring into the depths of the spirits that sloshed against the sides of the glass. “But it must be done.”

* * *

Francis was loathe to speak of those two weeks, and was content only in that his condition was known to so few people. There was Jopson, of course, because there could not have been a Francis if Jopson had not been there, cleaning his messes and bullying him to drink water or broth. Blanky too, who despite his injuries, had recovered enough to pick up Crozier’s caseload in the interim (Francis suspected Ross’ hand in that, but had too few moments of lucidity to whip himself into a fury over it). Blanky, who recovered from his injury in a manner most men would call a miracle but Blanky would call “just another Tuesday” kept himself busy, first from his bed and then on the ground, catching all manner of cheating spouses, blackmailers, and even found the long lost brother of a famous magistrate (who was summarily paid off to never contact said magistrate again). In the second week of Francis’ convalescence he would sometimes come in the evenings to regale a half delirious Francis with jokes and anecdotes, until Francis slipped into either a blissful unconsciousness or a furious rage. Ned Little knew because Jopson knew, and would tend to him sometimes when Jopson was grasping at a few hours rest, tutting at him and shaking his head. There was no one else. Ross kept his word and stayed away, and as Francis was rather short on friends or nearby family, almost the whole sphere of his acquaintance was accounted for.

Except…

Except there was one night when someone _else_ came to call.

Francis could not say, later, _when_ it happened, or if it had even been real, and not just some other effect of the withdrawal on his addled brain. There had been many things he saw and heard in those fifteen days which he knew upon reflection had no basis in reality, and could dismiss the instance as one of these. It was only that those _other_ hallucinations had not crept in during the middle of the night while Jopson was catching fitful sleep on the sofa in the other room and Little was off at their shared flat. None of the dreams had gently brushed the hair back from Francis’ sweat dampened brow, nor made a sad sort of noise in their throat as they moped his face with a cool, wet cloth.

“Do try to pull through,” the shade, the man, had said, in a rich voice that reminded Francis of moonlight and emeralds and shimmering purple silk. “I find I’ve rather missed our games.” Then he felt his hand gripped, just once, before a cool breeze fell upon him, and he drifted back into a tremulous slumber.

When he thought about it later - and if Crozier didn’t know any better - he would have said it was The Magpie. But that would be madness. Why should the man risk his life and freedom simply to check up on the _detective hired to stop him._

Although according to Ross, the Magpie had been silent ever since the Turnback Killer’s reappearance.

Francis called it a coincidence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise that I will make up for the lack of Fitzjames in this chapter with the next threeeeee chapters!


	6. The Stars This Night in the Sky are Ringing Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before I sat down to edit, this chapter clocked in at just under 2k. Its now WELL over 5. ENJOY.

On the morning of the sixteenth day since Blanky’s injury, Francis woke up without feeling like someone stuffed his head full of wet cotton, without groaning against the shock of the sun in his eyes. He rose from his bed on tentative legs, dressed, and made his way to the sitting room, its shape both familiar and strange, after so long confined to his bed. He found Jopson collapsed in an armchair by the fire, Ned Little on the floor against his legs, both fast asleep. With a soft smile, Francis drew a throw over them both and left them to their slumber.

He prepared a simple breakfast of toast and tea while the sun made a slow slide across the table. The newspapers of the last few days were stacked in a pile, and Francis skimmed the stories while sipping his tea ( _just_ tea, much to the relief of the teacup). Despite the fact that Ross had no luck tracking Hickey’s whereabouts, no new attacks occurred while Francis fought off his own demons from the privacy of his bedchamber. Yet he read no less than five stories from the last few days which claimed the Turnback Killer had been seen everywhere from the halls of Parliament to a train bound for Siberia. A quick perusal of the supposed eyewitnesses, who were either not named or dubbed a Mr. or Mrs. Smith or Jones, told Francis these supposed sightings might be set aside as rumor or wholly fabricated. An accurate rendering of Hickey’s face graced several of the front pages, the docks and trains were being watched by people more reliable than the mysterious Mr. Joneses of the world, and Francis hoped the man would not be able to flee, now. He would see Hickey caught and tried for his crimes, for Irving, for Blanky. But other articles caught his eye, and he allowed his eyes to drift over the name he had been wondering over for weeks, even through the depths of his illness.

The Magpie, it seemed, remained at large, although the fervor over the dashing and daring thief had been almost totally replaced by Turnback Killer hysteria. He struggled to locate a _single_ report of a Magpie sighting! ( _James shan't care for that,_ he thought, idly and strange.) What if the man decided to quit the venture altogether, moved on from his capers into an actual career? But before he could prod at the strange sense of this hope which almost bordered on a fear, he heard a clatter from near the fireplace, and Jopson was at his elbow almost within the same moment.

“I’m sorry sir, I didn’t think you would -”

“Nonsense, Jopson,” Francis waved his hand away. He remembered snippets, images and shouts and interrupted phrases from the last few weeks, and curled in on himself as he reviewed the terrible things he said to his faithful steward in the depths of his withdrawal. “It is I who should apologize. I fear I have been quite awful to both of you, while receiving nothing but kindness in return.”

“No, sir, it was -” Francis raised an eyebrow at him, and whatever false nicites Jopson was about to say died in his throat. “Well, I’m happy you’re doing better, sir.” Francis smiled.

“I believe you’re due for a few days off,” he said. “Take the week. Get out of the city, go visit Little’s family out in the country. You both deserve it.”

“But you’ve only just -”

“I’ll be fine, lad,” Francis said, and marveled at how the words were true, for the first time in so long. “I will.”

“Stop fighting him, Tom,” Little groaned from the floor, to which, in Jopson’s absence, he had abandoned himself utterly. “I’ll wire the family this morning, we can be on the train by noon.” Jopson turned back to Francis, apologetically.

“We don’t have to -”

“You _do_ ,” Francis insisted. They deserved the week, and more, for what they had done.

“We _do_ ,” Little agreed.

They were on the train by eleven.

* * *

Francis puttered around his flat the next day, gathering up the courage to go round to Blanky’s to eat his crow. And yet as he stood on the front step after ringing the bell, ready to apologize, to beg forgiveness, he instead found himself clapped on the back and pulled into one of his friend's rib crushing hugs.

“Never seen you look better,” Blanky said when they parted. “Come on in, Esther will want to see you.”

“See me? She’d be well within her rights to strike me,” Francis muttered, as he passed over the threshold into the chaos that was Blanky’s front room. Toys and books were strewn over the sofa, the tables, and somewhere within the depths of the house children were laughing.

“As well I should!” Blanky’s wife called from the kitchen. “It’s no less than you deserve! But my husband says I’m to be nice to you, so I’ll only be subjecting you to my cooking.”

“Aye now he’ll want you to bash him over the head to escape your teacakes!”

“He almost got my husband killed, he can suffer my teacakes!”

Francis passed a quiet afternoon (or as quiet as Blanky’s house ever was, with all those children underfoot) munching on Esther’s attempt at teacakes and sipping her excellent tea. Each time he tried to apologize, Blanky would redirect them to some ridiculous anecdote about Esther fighting with the butcher in the marketplace, or a spat his youngest had gotten in with the neighborhood bully, while his wife provided colorful commentary with words Francis was certain only she could employ with such ease.

After the third such story, Francis understood he was forgiven. He fretted a bit, over whether he deserved such a thing, after even a perfunctory review of his own actions, but in the end, as Esther bustled him out the door by tightening the scarf around his neck while telling him not to catch his death and Blanky trying to make plans with him to go over the Magpie case again as soon as Francis felt well enough, he considered that perhaps he spent too much time keeping an exacting ledger of what he did and did not deserve, and might fare better by merely accepting what his friends were willing to offer.

His visit to Ross the day after mirrored his experience at the Blankys. Ann tittered and fussed over him like a mother hen (Shall I have Hill fetch more tea, Francis? How are the biscuits?), while he and Ross regaled each other with reminisces of the voyages of their youth.

Even when Ann and Ross clasped hands, and Francis felt that familiar desire to crawl inside a bottle, it was accompanied by a thread of something like gratitude, relief that despite all of it, all of his failings and griping and misery, he was still permitted to reside within the sphere of their grace.

Towards the end of the week, when Francis was feeling well enough to consider tackling the Turnback Killer case file once more, a letter arrived with the morning post, (though how it arrived there Francis could not quite say, since it bore neither postage nor an address). But there was his own name, writ in that familiar, flourishing hand, and Francis was helpless against the small smile that played about his lips and the blush which rose in his cheeks as he broke the seal (again with the custom etching) and began to read.

> _My Dear Francis -_
> 
> _Though it has been a dreadfully long time since last we spoke, I cannot fault you for it. I’m delighted to hear you’ve recovered from the illness which kept you so long at home, and it should come as no surprise when I admit I was furious at the thought you should abandon our games for the gates of paradise, and hoped often for your safe return among the living. Now that you are back, of course, I fear you have been too long out of your vocation to pose anything more than a middling challenge, and so I have decreased the difficulty considerably to as to give us a fair playing field._

Here Francis snorted. The cheek!

> _There is a lady I hear tell that you are quite well acquainted with. She has in her possession a number of furs, which, while I will not delineate to you the specifics of why, are quite ill suited to her in both colour and taste. I plan on relieving the young madam of her poor choice in outerwear upon her next visit to the opera._
> 
> _Find me there._
> 
> _We have matters of business to discuss._
> 
> Yours,
> 
> James

_Well then._

How did the Magpie learn of his embarrassing history with Miss Cracroft? Was his humiliation common enough knowledge that anyone with a - a passing interest in him would be able to secure the information? The thought that he might be the laughingstock of parlors all across the city made him cringe, but the promise of another meeting with the Magpie was enough to soothe the ache. But what of the matter of business to discuss? Did James intend on… on turning himself in? Abandoning London entirely? This alone was enough to tantalize, not to mention that if James were planning on absconding with the furs of Miss Cracroft herself, it was Francis’ duty to ensure that such a thing did not occur. And yet how to explain to Sophia his intentions without making himself and whatever… _understanding_ he and the Magpie held between them appear utterly ridiculous?

In the end, he found himself outside the Franklin’s doorstep, James’ letter in his pocket, asking for an audience with Sophia herself.

“Francis!” Sophia exclaimed upon his being led to the drawing room. He waited for his heart to make the familiar heave into his mouth, and was surprised when it did not come. “I was quite worried for you, I heard you were awfully ill.” She was all in earnest, and though he could no longer hope that the ember of her worry might kindle itself into a higher sort of regard, he was glad to know he had not been completely absent from her thoughts. “Please sit!” She patted the chair beside her. “I have not seen you since the thrilling fashion parade! I’ve longed to know the details of how you managed to thwart the Magpie that evening.” Francis bent his head and told her the story, and though he was not as accomplished a storyteller as some, Sophia gasped and laughed and clapped her hands in all the right places, and as their meeting wore on it was as though the dark cloud of his failed proposals was lifted from their relationship, and they might speak again without each of her smiles striking at Francis’ heart like so many needles. He had forgotten, in his long, soaked melancholy, about Sophia’s cleverness, her command of conversation.

“It is actually the Magpie himself that brings me to you today,” Francis said once the story had concluded.

“Oh?” Sophia waited for an explanation with bright eyes. How had he ever been so angry with her? _Oh no, Mr. Crozier was never for me! He was an earnest suitor, and as such his proposal merited an earnest refusal._ Once, not so long ago, those words burned through him, but was she not correct? Should she have coquettishly refused him, allowing him hope which would never be realized? _He_ was the one who had not listened the first time, who had decided that if Ross would be wed to a perfect specimen then by God he would find himself the same, and in his awful stubbornness had not known how to accept a “no” with dignity and grace.

“Yes.” Francis shifted uncomfortably, wondering how much he should give away, trying to shake away the threads of self recrimination that began to wind their way around his thoughts. “It seems he’s decided he’s fond of… well, James has been making a game of it, you see, the thefts.”

“James?” Sophia asked. “You mean Chief Inspector Ross?”

“Er-” Francis scrambled. _Foolish, damned foolish._ “Well, no - not him, I mean he knows about it, it’s the Magpie.”

“The Magpie? Francis, I’m sorry, I’m not following at all!” Sophia shook her head, smiling.

“I’m botching the whole -” Francis stuttered. “He likes to - to send letters, before the thefts are committed. Declares what his next target is, when he will decide to strike.”

“I’ve never heard of that before! Aunt Jane will have to turn in her sash as head of the society’s gossip committee!”

“No one knows but a very select few. Scotland Yard wants to keep it out of the public eye. You know how society is, before the day was out every flippant young rake and his grandmother would have authentic Magpie letters threatening the family stores.”

“I cannot argue with that,” Sophia laughed. “But why tell me?” Why indeed? Here was the crux of the thing, but how to -

“It seems you’ve been targeted next,” Francis blurted out, before he could complicate things further.

“Me?” Sophia’s face betrayed nothing but honest surprise, a riotous mix of confusion and delight. “But I’m not - Francis, I have nothing worth the Magpie’s time, there must be a mistake.”

“I’m afraid not. He says he plans on stealing your furs the next time you go to the opera.”

“My furs? How absurd!” Sophia clapped her hands together. “I must _not_ disappoint him, I shall make plans with my aunt at once! Oh, you _must_ accompany us, that’s what this visit is all about, yes? You’re trying to stop him? Clap him in irons at last?”

“Yes - yes of course,” Francis nodded, a creeping sensation slinking into the back of his brain. He wanted to _catch_ the Magpie, surely? Put him behind bars?

And yet -

Francis blinked. Since he received the letter, the only thought in his head had been that he would get to _talk_ to James again, with no regard at all for the chance that he might be _captured_.

What was _happening_?

“Francis?” From Sophia’s tone it was not the first time she had called his name, and Francis shook his head out of his reverie.

“Yes?”

“I asked, is it alright if I tell my aunt? Or shall you swear me to secrecy?” Her lips quirked with her barely contained joy. Lady Jane was a fine woman, to be sure, but Francis would not rely on her sense of discretion.

“Perhaps - perhaps it would be best if she weren’t aware of our intentions.”

“Excellent!” Sophia appeared not disappointed in the slightest. “Then we shall be in this enterprise together. I shall devise some reason or another that you are to accompany us, and then - well! We will see if your Magpie makes an appearance.”

“He’s not _my_ Magpie,” Francis said automatically.

“Well he is certainly not Scotland Yard’s!” Sophia laughed again.

“I suppose,” Francis mused.

He supposed, indeed.

* * *

The plan, such as it was, went off almost exactly as Francis expected. Lady Jane was quite pleased to see Francis out again “looking so well,” and whatever story Sophia related had satisfied her that Francis was not attempting to yet again renew his ill-fated suit, a fact for which Francis was quite grateful. _Figaro_ was playing, if that means anything. Francis had always been incapable of following the plots of operas, but judged by the occasional ripple of laughter around the theater that this was one of the funny ones, and it cheered him,

He could not abide a tragedy, not this evening.

If later, someone had thought to ask him why, he never would have been able to explain it, but the second act concluded and all the luminary ladies and gentleman began to file out of their seats, he felt a change in the air, a charge in the atmosphere, perhaps, and he knew that the Magpie was here, somewhere, and was soon to strike. There was an excited ripple of anticipation in his chest, a tingling in his fingers he could not ignore.

“What are you smiling over?” asked Sophia, with a champagne flute clutched in her left hand. She looked radiant in blue, her blonde curls deftly piled atop her head and pinned in place. (The furs which the Magpie intended to relieve her of this night Francis could not comment on, as he had no sense for what was or was not fashionable, but the ensemble was pleasing to the eye) Were it a year - nay - a month and a half past, he would have gone straight into a melancholy over how he should never have such a stunning jewel to call his own, simmered with rage for the rest of the evening, directed mostly at himself. But this night he found he could not seem to muster the merest shred of temper.

Now, he gave her an appreciative shrug, and strained around her to see if anyone was moving towards them with an over practiced ease. Francis found his suspicions unfounded until the bell rang, and Lady Jane gave him a strange look before Sophia stepped between them, offering Francis her arm. But as they began to file back to their seats, the trio found themselves jostled by several of those behind them, accompanied by a chorus of pardons and excuses which rolled from the back of the crowd toward the front.

“Terribly sorry,” muttered a voice in his ear, a deep baritone that curled his toes and prickled the delicate hairs on the back of his neck, but when he turned his head there was none there who could have spoken.

“Francis!” Sophia cried, in a way that was not quite able to conceal her amusement. “My furs! They’re gone!” Francis grinned, actually _grinned_ at her, heedless of the gap between his teeth, and took off in the direction of the side doors, following the sounds of outraged theater patrons being shoved aside.

When he reached the street, a narrow little lane where several actors half in their costume were leaning against the walls, laughing and smoking, he found a ladder set against almost immediately before him, and looking up, he caught the wisp of a coattail vanishing over the roof. The ladder was a taunt, _here you are, old man, catch me if you can_ , but Francis was through taking the more difficult way to spite his own face. He pursued up the ladder as fast as he was able, and when he heard James shouting above him, he knew that the Magpie was not even attempting an earnest chase. No, he was being led somewhere, and when he saw James again he would -

“Over here, Francis!” James sat with his back to the detective, his feet dangling off the edge of a sloped roof, the furs draped around his neck. Francis watched as he rose to his feet, his long legs unfolding, his uncovered hair brushing the edges of his shoulders.

“Take a step back, eh?” Francis muttered. “So topheavy a stiff wind might blow you straight down to the pavement.”

But when the Magpie turned around, a sardonic little smile playing around his mouth, it was Francis who had to take a step back.

James was not wearing his mask.

Francis had known the man must be handsome, for all laws of nature and science dictated that a dashing gentleman thief prone to skipping away over the rooftops should indeed be so, but he had not been prepared for the effect James’ bare face would have upon him. There were the cheekbones, a strong nose which suggested it had been broken at least once, clever brown eyes shining underneath strong brows.

“If I’d known that’s how you would look at me, I’d have taken off the mask _ages_ ago,” James chuckled. Francis realized his mouth was hanging open slightly, and he shut it so fast his molars clacked together.

“I’m not looking at you in _any_ way,” Francis snapped. “And I’d like those furs returned to their proper owner at once.” James looked at the furs in his hand with a huff of disgust.

“Francis, truly, I’m doing her a favor by removing them from her wardrobe. These went out of fashion _a decade_ past, and they wash out her lovely complexion. If she had a better sense of fashion perhaps she would-”

“Don’t disparage her so!”

“Whyever should I not?”

“I’ll have you know that Miss Cracroft is a lady of fine tastes and-”

“And yet she rejected you, _twice_ as I heard it.” James shook his head. “No sense of taste at all.” Francis blinked furiously, waiting for his brain to come up with a clever retort, or at least to comprehend the _meaning_ behind James’ strange phrasing, and becoming more embarrassed and humiliated the longer he could muster nothing but silence. Finally, blessedly, James took pity on him.

“Very well, I shall return to you the hideous furs of the _precious_ Miss Cracroft, but I demand something in exchange.”

“You’re in an unusual position to be making demands, James.”

“I don’t fear you, Francis Crozier. You’ll no more attempt to arrest me than I would try to harm you.” With a strange sort of certainty, Francis knew it to be true. If there had ever been a desire to see this man jailed, stuck in the docket before a judge with all the power of a parliament of well dressed vultures pulling the strings, it had never come from a sense of justice, or morality. It had come from, of all places, _jealousy_. James had moved in circles with an ease that Francis could not have accessed on his best day, his name was on the lips of every man, woman and child for months, and he’d tried to make a game out of Francis’ investigation, but the Magpie had never meant anyone harm. Some stolen silver, an insured necklace, a dress that shimmered when he walked and had looked far finer on him than any of the other models (not that he had _seen_ it on anyone else), was the loss of any of these items harmful to their owners? Why give to James the same treatment as Hickey deserved, when their actions could not be more disparate?

Could he not simply, for this night, play along with the Magpie’s game?

“Fine,” Francis ground out between his teeth. “Name your price.” James’ face broke into a wide grin, and Francis wanted to trace the lines along his cheeks, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes. His fingers twitched. Such contact would be startlingly improper, unwelcome, The Magpie would laugh like Sophia had that day in Sir Franklin’s study, _Oh no, Mr. Crozier, you’ve gotten it all wrong!_

“A kiss.”

Francis Crozier had never been one for illustrative fiction, and thus had no sense of reference when his blood ran cold in his veins, only to be replaced by a warmth of a very different kind. A kiss? But how - how would he - what -

James, the clever, tall, handsome Magpie, was holding out his empty, ungloved hand, fingers down, like a dainty lady greeting him in her parlor. And Francis, craggy, red faced, gap toothed, misery incarnate Francis Crozier, under a paper thin veneer of plausible deniability, hesitated only a moment before bowing like a young gallant, taking that warm hand gently in his, and pressing a soft kiss upon it. (The Magpie did _not_ softly sigh - that was - it was just the wind. Francis would not dare hope that _he could -_ ) His fingers were pressed against the bare skin of James’ wrist, and it would take no more than a twitch of his muscles to run the tip of his finger underneath the cuff of James’ coat, see if -

Francis dropped the Magpie’s hand with more hesitation than he would care for.

“There we are,” James said, a little breathless. He took ages to step back, withdraw his hand back to his side.“You may take these” - he handed Francis back the furs - “back to your dear Miss Cracroft. Though I’m _certain_ she won’t thank you properly for it.”

“And how do _you_ believe she should thank me?” Francis asked, quietly. James’ eyes flicked down only once, before he met Francis with a devilish gaze.

“Oh, I’m sure I’ll show you one day.” He stepped back further, well outside the warm sphere of Francis’ reach. “Though I’m afraid now that the fun has concluded I have some business to discuss with you.”

“Has this not been business?”

“Don’t be daft, Francis, this has all been for pleasure. No, I’m afraid it's about your Turnback killer.” There was a chill in the air that had not come from a single gust of wind. Francis’ whole demeanor altered, he squared his shoulders, tilted his head, straightened the line of his spine.

“What do you know?” He fought the urge to dig the notebook out of his pocket.

“Not what I _know_ \- what I’ve seen. I’ve seen _him_ , I’m sure of it.” Francis tried not to let the disappointment show on his face.

“You and every other bored housewife from here to Mayfair.”

“Francis,” James’ face lost every trace of its usual flippancy, and - was he mimicking Francis’ pose? “I will not say why, but I would never exaggerate in this matter. I’m quite serious. With this _man_ , this killer, I would never.” He spoke with a conviction Francis could not remember ever hearing before in their conversations. “Have I ever lied to you before?”

“Perhaps.”

“Only of omission,” James said. “And either way, what cause would I have to lie to you about this? Do you think I’m working with the Killer to lead you astray?”

“No,” Francis shook his head vehemently. “No I don’t believe that.”

“Good.”

“Go on then,” Francis said, softer this time. “Where did you see him?” James’ eyes flicked away.

“Primrose Street. It was rather late - after midnight, I suppose. I was so sure it was him I followed, for a time. I saw where he’d gone.” Primrose street? Why, that wasn’t but two streets over from where Francis lay his head at night!

“And I’m to believe you just _happened_ to see him?”

“Believe whatever you like,” James almost snapped. He handed out a folded piece of paper, and Francis took it.

“There’s an address there. That’s where he went. I’ve seen him coming and going since then, he’s still there.”

“But why not just send it in a letter? Why all the -” Francis waved his hand around to indicate all of it, the opera, Miss Cracroft, James’ lack of a mask.

“Because,” James suddenly snatched the paper out of his hands. “Because you must _promise_ me, Francis, you must _promise_ that you won’t go alone.” There it was again, that strange fascination with Francis’ well being, the _everyone needs a good looking after_ , the _I hoped for your return among the living_ from his letter that echoed the still too impossible to be real dream during his illness, the _do try to pull through._

“Why should you care, James?” Francis asked, harsher than he intended. “All this - these disguises and letters and trying to get me to scarper after you. _Why_?” James bit the inside of his cheek. His eyes darted over toward the moon, smothered by the clouds into a weak haze.

“You _interest_ me, Francis Crozier,” he said, finally. Then, softer. “You _always_ have.”

Francis could feel it then, the memory scratching at the back of his mind, James’ face - younger, laughing, somewhere in the sunshine -

But then it was gone as soon as Francis thought he had seized upon it, like a dream upon waking.

“Who _are_ you, James?” he asked, frustrated at the loss. James’ face broke into a wide smile.

“I rather think answering that question is _your_ job, detective.” There it was again, that flash of memory, and Francis could not help but chuckle.

“Quite right, James, quite right. Though it rather seems we’ve switched places this evening, you doing my work for me, finding our Killer. Considering a career change? Trying to push me out of my own business?” James’ smile took on a wistful twist, and Francis wanted to kiss the sudden hint of sadness away at once.

“You won’t go alone then? To apprehend Hickey?” The change was as sharp as it had been before, when furs and their too warm prices had given way to cold business.

“I will not go alone,” Francis vowed, and James breathed a long sigh.

“Good,” he muttered, and handed the paper back to Francis. “Well then, detective, I believe this is yours. Until next time.” With that, the Magpie winked at him, and took off at a saunter out over the slate and stone. Francis traced his fine figure until he vanished behind a chimney and was swallowed by the fog.

* * *

Miss Sophia Cracroft was delighted to retrieve her furs, and yet when she slipped the finest around her thin shoulders Francis was baffled at the thought that perhaps James - perhaps the Magpie - had been correct in his estimation of her fashion sense. Or was it that he had seen them around another pair of shoulders, and could not see them the same around hers? Lady Jane and Sophia both were ravenous for details of what had happened, and he told them an overly sanitized version of the tale as they rode in the carriage home. Sophia kept shooting him odd, knowing looks, but Lady Jane drank in each word with eyes as wide as saucers. When they reached the Franklin’s door, Francis escorted each of them down and turned to bid them a polite farewell.

“You must take the carriage home,” Lady Jane insisted, almost helping him back into the carriage herself. “It’s far too late to be walking all over the city, not to mention all the goings on. No,” she raised her had at Francis’ abortive attempt at a refusal. “I don’t care how fond of walking you are in the least. It’s almost two miles back and I’ll not stand for it.” Whatever else he had meant to say died on his lips. He had promised the Magpie caution, had he not?

“That would be lovely, Lady Jane, I thank you.” Lady Jane said goodnight in the manner of a woman who has gotten her way precisely and swept inside, with the self satisfaction of a job well done, leaving Sophia alone with Francis to make her own farewells.

“This was a wonderful evening, Francis,” she said, pressing her gloved hand to his in the manner of close friends, or cousins. “It was good to see you smile again.” Francis thanked her warmly and made mention of his hoping they could continue to meet as friends. She asserted that she felt the same, started to say something else, but then merely laughed softly and shook her head.

“Goodnight, Francis.”

Francis rode home in the Franklins’ carriage, whistling to himself all the way. He kept his eye on the line of rooftops ahead of him for the entirety of the journey.

* * *

In the very early morning he rose with a sense of clarity he had not possessed for years, donned his dressing gown, and took down from his shelf a book which he had not poured over in many years. He flipped to its very last pages, labeled _H.M.S. Comet, 1869-70_. Here was contained all he had preserved from that very last voyage, when he was a still young and bitterly frustrated man of 33. He turned to the ship’s manifest, ran the tip of his index finger down a list of names he’d not thought of in nearly two decades, dispassionately passing his own name, until at last he reached the junior officers. There he was. Francis could have laughed. All that time spent searching for the Magpie, running after that ridiculous man, having absurd conversations (being beguiled by him), there he had been all along, right there on Francis’ shelf, waiting to be found. There, underneath a young officer by the unfortunate name of Humpheries Chastington-Smythe, was the Magpie himself.

Midshipman James Fitzjames.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ohohohohohohohoohhoh here we go folks. Next two chapters are finale time. As always, come yell at me over on tumblr at [@soft-october-night](https://soft-october-night.tumblr.com/)


	7. All His Songs are Stolen, so He Hides

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: mild injuries and the tending thereof

The memories of that voyage on the _Comet_ were clouded, murky with drink and memories plastered over too many times, like an ugly wall at the back of a stinking pub. It was a grueling, year long trawl around the Indian Ocean, hunting for pirates they never found, as his fellow officers and the men collapsed one by one, victims of malaria and yellow fever. He suffered weeks under the beating hot sun, with sweat pooling in the middle of his back and a head of thinning hair boiling underneath a third lieutenant's cap he knew would never rise any higher. Francis had been too Irish, too blunt, too _himself_ to find further promotion in peacetime, not alongside an over-abundant sea of fine English sons of fine English gentlemen. He’d been at the bottle even then, telling himself he deserved to slip into an oblivion of his own creation after each miserable day by collapsing half drunk into his berth. He would escape the blinding glint of the sun and the heat at last, dreaming of ice and snow and cold.

The majority of his reminiscences about the James Fitzjames he once knew were nothing more than vague impressions: a voice raised above the other junior officers on the deck as it reagled some such story or another, cheers during a daring race up the mizzen, a toothy grin in a young, pointed face.

If it wasn’t for the storm, Francis wondered if he ever would have remembered him at all.

It was the type of storm where the sea is calm one moment and a boiling minefield the next. The captain and his second were too sick from fever to leave their beds, and the lieutenant above Francis (who was there because he was a second of a landed gentleman and not through any merit of his own) panicked as soon as the waves sprange up and ship began to pitch, leaving Francis to take control of the ship. It was Francis Crozier who sailed the _Comet_ around the shoals they almost foundered on, kept her steady despite the storms best efforts to send them under.

There was rain, failing in large, painful drops that blinded and lashed, the wind - the wind that nearly did them in - and, finally, a terrified, determined pair of dark eyes staring down at him after a damned gust caught his coat and bore him down to the deck on his back (“Get up sir!” Francis thought Fitzjames was strong for one so young as he was hauled up.) the stab of resentment that he was so helpless he required rescuing by some _child_ (“What are you doing?” he spat, shrugging off Fitzjames’ arm.) the pronounced thickness in his brogue as he shouted instructions to the men (“I only came to help, sir, I -”) the prayers he whispered as the ship pitched again, the fear in the boy’s face as he went flying -

(Francis reached out, grabbed his arm.

“What’re you doing?” he shouted again, drawing the boy back from the rail. “Get belowdecks, you little fool.”)

Francis remembered the look on Fitzjames’ face as he ordered him below, and he was no closer to identifying the strange mix of emotions he saw there sixteen years later than he could in the thick of the gale.

It was the only interaction between the two of them he could clearly recall.

Young James Fitzjames was a bit character in the farce of Francis’ life until the _Comet_ next made port in London. All the memories blurred, skirting around the edges, a howl of laughter in the galley, Fitzjames’ voice rising whenever Francis passed - boys poking fun at the ridiculous Irish lieutenant. There was no more.

Francis’ drinking got worse, and he’d been too soused to even bod his shipmates a proper goodbye when they made that final, blessed arrival back in London, where Francis turned in his resignation at once. Ross had gotten him his job with Scotland Yard, and he’d again risen in the ranks through his keen eye for observation and intolerance for nonsense until his - until _they_ didn’t need him anymore, either. Fitzjames had faded away into the cellars of Francis’ memory, consigned to be forgotten altogether.

Until he decided to go leaping over the London housetops, that is.

Because Fitzjames, the loud, audacious junior officer who once picked him up off the deck during the throes of a gale was James, the _Peacock._ The Magpie.

It was the eyes that had done it, had knocked the memory loose from the shelf where it had been gathering dust for almost two decades, but if Francis had questions before he opened his records book, they had increased by _magnitudes_ since. When did Fitzjames leave the service? Why? Why - why _any of it?_ The thefts and the - He had been a junior officer, properly English, popular, surely headed for a dull yet distinguished career in Her Majesty’s Navy! What changed?

Well, no matter the questions. Francis solved the case, had he not? He’d unmasked the Magpie ( _only after he unmasked for you, first_ , he thought, pointedly). He should close the book, go straight to Ross, tell him the Magpie had a name - (The Magpie’s - James’ - letters, all of them, sat in a pile on the table where Francis left them the previous evening. The address to Hickey’s presumed location sat atop them, _you must promise me you won’t go alone_.) That was exactly what he _should_ do, only…

Only Francis wasn’t going to do any of that at all. He was going to go to Ross, certainly, to tell his old friend he’d discovered Hickey’s location all on his own with nothing but sharp investigative work and intuition, and together they would bring the Turnback Killer down for good.

The Magpie - James - could wait.

* * *

The plan had been well considered.

The address James gave him led Francis to an old warehouse, with multiple doors and windows, and a cellar besides. An ideal place for a rat to hide, he thought, as he stood out in the bright sunshine and bitter cold, watching for any suspicious comings and goings.

His trust in James was rewarded when, two hours after he’d taken up his post across the street, a man in a dark coat with an upturned collar, about Hickey’s height and bearing (with a clean face, an attempt to hide his identity) emerged from a small door on the side of the building and made his way up the street.

Francis waited until he returned to be sure, before hurrying to Ross' offices. His old friend was blessedly not interested in the details as much as he was planning for the capture, and together they poured over a map to the city. He _thought_ they prepared for each contingency, every method by which Hickey would try to evade them, assembled a choice team of constables, and set out around dusk to put their tactics into the field at once.

Several hours later, while crouched alone in a half inch of snow alone in an alley, waiting for Ross to give the signal, Crozier felt a sharp pressure in the small of his back, just against his spine, and almost laughed.

He never should have counted on his luck.

“Lovely surprise, seeing you here, Mr. Crozier,” Hickey muttered. “Ever find poor missing Mr. Nadler?” Francis opened his mouth to shout - Ross’ men couldn’t be further than a few dozen yards - but the point of the knife went from polite to positively insistent. Francis could feel the metal against his skin, closed his mouth in acknowledgement of the message the knife sent so ardently.

“That’s right detective, none of that, or I’ll cut you down where you stand.”

Would such an outcome be intolerable, should he disregard the warning? A month ago he would have done it, and damn the consequences. There must be enough constables about! Hickey wouldn’t escape this time, no matter how slippery of a bastard he was. All it would cost was one Francis Crozier. He could even picture the announcement in the paper: Former Navy man, ex-inspector, private detective. Irish. Never wed, but grieved by his few close friends. It was a death that would make headlines for perhaps a day before being swallowed in the furor over the capture of the Turnback Killer. Barely any price to pay at all!

Yet when he considered the benefits to such a course of action, he found that no matter how well they might stack up, the whole pack of them could not hope to outweigh a feeling that shrieked stronger still, a feeling that was surprising as it was quite simple, the most basic of instincts that had been shut up inside him for so long he could scarcely recognized it for what it was.

Francis Crozier realized that he did not _want_ to die.

His mouth remained closed, and Hickey chuckled.

“There we are, detective. Right this way, quietly now.” Hickey led him at knifepoint down the street, out of view of any of the constables. One of them would notice he was gone, would run for Ross as soon as Franics did not appear at the appointed place. Their feet made tracks in the snow, for Chrissake! Hickey might make another mistake - or perhaps Francis could merely overpower him. He had the advantage of height and weight, though Hickey was probably quicker. As he considered his options, Hickey turned them down a dark and narrow lane that ended in a dead end, shoved Crozier ahead of him, brandishing the knife. There was nowhere to run, and Hickey grinned, thinking he had Francis trapped.

“I thought we might meet again like this one day, detective,” he smarmed, clearly the beginning of a speech. It was so overwrought the only thing missing was a twirl of his mustache (which he undoubtedly would have done had the man not shaved it off an an attempt to disguise himself), and Francis fought the urge to roll his eyes. “I don’t imagine you thought it would end like this, stinking of drink, trying to capture the Turnback Killer himself.” Francis wasn’t stinking of anything, but it seemed the man had been rehearsing this speech for the last month or so. Probably in front of the mirror, making sure his face was as wide and manic as possible. “Your one grand deed in an otherwise mediocre existence.” Good _Christ_ , at least James had been believable in his performances. “I’m sure you’ve been wondering why I do it, how I picked each one, how I -”

“Not really,” Francis interrupted. Hickey smiled out of the side of his mouth and scratched the back of his head, the only gesture he made at having monologue so interrupted. “My interest is to see you behind bars, Mr. Hickey. If you're that desperate to be heard I'm sure the judge would be more interested in the story than I.” Hickey's smooth smile returned.

“I don't think that's very likely, Mr. Crozier. Instead, imagine how they’ll howl when they find you tomorrow morning in the state I plan on leaving you.”

“If you can,” Francis said, with a shrug. Hickey smirked.

“It was really only the last one that mattered. The last before I left London. Met him just that evening, he told me he was bound for sea and sunshine, all expenses paid by the Queen herself. The heat was on by then, thought I’d get out of London, get myself a vacation while I was at it. But - well, I suppose Irving told you how that one worked out.”

“Are you through yet?” Francis asked. Perhaps if he had known this is how Hickey would chose to draw out his murder, he would have risked a shout earlier.

“I wanted to dump the body in the canal, but -”

“You wanted to go to sea so bad, you could have just joined up. You wouldn't be the first to try and escape a hanging in the belly of the Navy.” There! For the very first time, annoyance flicked across Hickey’s face, and Francis hoped the triumph he felt did not show on his own. Ire was Francis' friend of old, he knew well how it could twist and cut and make men foolish.

“I’ll bet you’re wondering what my real name is -” Hickey began, trying to reclaim the conversation, but Francis was having none of it.

“I really don’t,” Francis let exasperation creep into his voice, like Hickey was boring him, like the grand speech Hickey has been planning to deliver was no more interesting than the blandest parson's showing on a Sunday. “You’ll be tried and convicted and hanged as Cornelius Hickey, and whoever you were before won't matter in the least.”

“Do you _actually_ think your Scotland yard can _possibly_ -”

“I _think_ that if you took this much time with _all_ your victims you never would have made it past the first.”

“You’re special, detective. You’re the only one who has ever gotten so close, _you're_ the one who made it so personal. It would be rude to dispatch you in the same manner as the others.”

Francis was just about to ready his next witty retort when suddenly there was a crash from above their heads and before they quite knew what was happening, a tall, lean man in an elegant coat had leapt into the alley from the rooftops above and landed behind Hickey. Francis knew the curl of that hair, the cut of the coat which seemed not to match the fine bearing of the wearer.

It was James. Hickey rounded on him at once, brandishing his knife, but the thief danced out of the way of the first slash, leading Hickey further toward the mouth of the lane, away from Francis.

“James -” Francis exclaimed, shocked at his appearance (but perhaps less shocked than one might have suspected.

“I _told_ you not to go alone!” James shouted by way of explanation. Hickey snarled and leapt for him.

“James!” Francis warned, running towards the pair. James managed to duck another assault, and before he had cause to guard against a second Francis was on Hickey, arms around his throat, trying to use his superior height and bulk to bring him down to the ground. But Hickey was stronger than he looked, and wiry besides, and fought against Francis’ charge.

“Francis, the knife!” James cried from somewhere ahead of them, and Francis released Hickey and pitched out of the way of the knife just in time: the blade came flying through the air where his eye had just been. Unbalanced, Francis tumbled clumsily to his knees a few steps away and scrambled back to his feet.

“You-” Hickey muttered. Francis was ready for him, but instead Hickey turned and tried to attack James yet again, demanding to know who he thought he was. The Magpie, however, was taller, and far more graceful steps than Hickey’s furious tread, and he spun easily out of the way of Hickey’s blade.

“You’ll have to try a bit harder than that, I’m afraid,” he quipped as he jumped back again upon Hickey's advance. “Although any time you’d like to cut in, Francis -” But then Hickey made a feint and stabbed again, James bit down on a pained cry - had James been hit?

Francis abandoned a tactical plan completely and simply dove for Hickey’s knees to bring him down to the ground, eliminating the threat from that thrice damned blade. Hickey fell with a growl, tried to twist around and almost slashed Francis’ wrist, and would have if Francis hadn’t let go. Before he could make a second attempt James slammed the heel of his perfectly shined boot straight down on Hickey’s hand again and again until the knife fell to the ground with a clatter, and James kicked it far from his reach.

“Did he -” Francis asked and if he were not holding Hickey down with all his might he would already be moving towards the thief to - to what, check him for injury? Punch him in the face for trying to attempt a rescue? Kiss him for the same reason?

At the last, Francis’ thoughts stopped as cold as the snow he knelt in, waiting for a reply.

“No, not as bad as all that,” James said, shaking his head, but Francis would have been blind to miss the beads of sweat on James’ forehead, or the slight greying of his features.

“Here they are!” shouted a voice at the mouth of the alley. _Ross’ men, finally_. They swarmed Hickey, and though the man tried to twist and wriggle away as soon as Francis gave way to the younger men, he soon found himself handcuffed and dragged off.

“Are you alright?” Ross raced towards Francis as soon as he caught sight of him, braced his hands on his friend’s shoulders. “You weren't there when I gave the signal, I knew something must have -”

“I'm alright, James, I’m alright -” (Francis didn’t feel alright at all, his knees were bruised and frozen through, his hands felt like frigid claws from the strain of holding Hickey) Behind him, he felt eyes of James, _the Magpie_ James, boring into the back of his head - wondering what Francis might do, if he would tell Ross they had captured not one, but two criminals this evening. “That’s the man.” He pointed towards Hickey, who was being hoisted into the air by four men to keep him from struggling. “We've got him at last.”

“It’s like the ending of a terrible dream,” Ross said, shaking his head in disbelief. “I still don't understand how you found him -” he held up a hand before Francis could interject - “And don't tell me, not tonight.” He closed his eyes against his exhaustion. “Not sure I could stand to hear whatever fool thing you did without my men having to arrest me for making the second attempt on your life in the same evening.” Ross passed a hand over his face. “ _Hell,_ Francis -”

“It’s alright,” Francis said again. “Whatever you're thinking it's not as bad as all that.” Ross stared at him for another moment.

“Who is your friend, then?” Ross asked, pointing at James in a dreadful attempt to change the subject. He turned his attention from Francis to look James up and down, as if he might make a full evaluation of the man with a few moments observation.

“I’m Mr. -” James began

“Mr. Fitzjames,” Francis cut in, smoothly. A name which did not begin with nearly that same syllable died on the Magpie’s tongue, changed its place for a small, startled gasp. The chief inspector peered from one to the other, trying to work out the puzzle.

“Been working with him since - well, since Blanky,” Francis, who had no idea what was about to come out of his mouth next, went on. “Tom can’t take to the streets like he could before, needed another pair of hands on deck, especially w - since I was ill I thought -” James took a small step forward and gently tugged on the sleeve of his coat. Francis took it as a sign to shut his mouth, before his frayed explanation continued another step it's descent into barely coherent babble.

“Ah -” Ross was now taking stock of James, evaluating his dress, his hair. Looked again from him to Francis. “I can’t imagine why Frank hasn’t mentioned you before, but well -” Ross coloured suddenly, and stuttered through several blinks before stepping back from them. “I apologize for my rudeness, it’s just -”

“James Fitzjames,” James repeated his name, stuck out his hand between them. Ross, grateful for any sign of sophisticated propriety, shook it as warmly as the occasion demanded.

“Awful time to begin our acquaintance,” Ross said with a glance behind him, once they dropped their arms and again the conversation between the three began to falter.

“Chief inspector, sir?” One of the constables trotted up to them. “Sorry to interrupt, sir, but we’d like to take him back to the station as soon as possible.”

“Yes, of course,” Ross replied. “Go on and see to it, I'll be along presently. We’ll need you to come down as well,” Ross said to Crozier. “Get the whole story.” He tilted his head, surveying the state of the two of them. “Although perhaps it can wait until tomorrow. If your ...friend - if Mr. Fitzjames could as well, that would be -”

“Of course,” Francis agreed, eager to get away from Ross for practically the first time in his life. “We’ll see you tomorrow, the both of us.” With a final, reluctant nod, Ross left the narrow lane, calling orders to his men, and Francis managed to hold the exaggerated sigh of relief trapped in his lungs just as long as it took Ross to get out of earshot. James’ fingers remained about the sleeve of his coat and Francis turned with an excited bubble in his chest to squeeze James’ hand (or perhaps to kiss him before he could forget that they weren’t like - not like that) but James caught the lapels of his coat before he could make any move, leaning into him in a way that implied a collapse rather than a romantic overture.

“James?”

“Francis I - I think I’ve been-” James swayed on his feet, his hand clutched at his side. Beneath them, a small, dark stain on the snow, steadily growing from a drip on the hem of James’ coat.

“The _knife_ ,” Francis exclaimed. James pressed his lips into a line and nodded. “Let me call back Ross - you there!” He shouted to an attending constable. “Fetch us a cab at once!” He turned back to James. “We’ll get you somewhere - get you a doctor -”

“No, no doctors,” James muttered, despite the fact that Francis felt as if he were the only thing holding James upright. Before he could reply, the constable reappeared with a hansom in tow, and Francis bundled James up through the door.

“Just - Just drop me somewhere, I’ll walk.”

“Absolutely not -” Was that what James thought of him? That he cared so little he would just - “You may choose your flat, or mine, but we must get you somewhere, call a doctor.” James’ back hit the seat and he gritted his teeth against the pain.

“It’s not nearly as bad as would require a _doctor_ -” Francis glowered at him, and he closed his eyes, tilted his head against the window glass. “Mine then. Wouldn’t want one of your servants to run off to the papers claiming that Crozier’s caught himself a Magpie, would we? Or perhaps you’ll have one of them educate Inspector Ross as to my identity, as you seem to have neglected to do so yourself.” He barked an address at the driver before Francis could quite decide why James should say the name of Ross in such a tone, or tell him that he only kept one servant and Jopson wasn’t due home for another two days, or admit that he had _no intention_ of telling _anyone_ that the Magpie had been found. Especially not _Ross_.

“What can I do?” Francis asked instead. “How can I -”

“Just -” James was scrambling for his tie, couldn’t unwind the knot with only one hand. “I can’t - I -” James pulled his hand away from the wound on his side, and Francis bit the side of his cheek when he saw that it was dark with blood. He yanked off his own tie, reached under James’ coat and held the fabric to the wound himself, could feel warm blood staining his hand even through the layers. It was the closest he had been to another human being in more than two years - close as lovers entwined in the back of a cab on the way back home from an evening on the town. Yet the only murmur in his ears were James hisses of pain, the only touch that was not blood soaked was the firm pressure of James’ white knuckled hand on Francis’ knee.

“You’re sure I can’t take you to a doctor?” Francis asked yet again. James shook his head back and forth like a child asked to come in from playing in order to sit for a visit from his gran, heedless of how it looked except to convey the negative.

“Have everything I need at home,” he said. “Bandages, catgut -” The cab hit a rut in the road and they were thrown together onto Francis’ side, and James hissed against the pain.

“Easy on,” Francis rubbed James’ arm up and down with his free hand, empty reassurances he remembered from somewhere deep in his memory. “We’re almost there.”

* * *

When they arrived at the residence in question, Francis at first assumed that there had been some mistake. Surely James could not live here? It was a rather small building, on a dark street in an unflattering side of town, and was waiting only for a stray chimney spark before it went up in a towering blaze. He had expected ( _imagined, when he had imagined)_ \- something grand, something befitting James’ personality, a polished iron gate, a white facade, a grave faced butler to greet them at the door.

Rather -

“Under the baseboard,” James muttered as they approached the front door. Without any comment further than the arching of an eyebrow, Francis felt under the board until his fingers bumped a small notch, which he could pull up wood to reveal a shining silver key.

Francis attempted to keep his face neutral as he opened the door to a small, dark set of rooms lit by sputtering lamps. The Magpie, _fury_ of the aristocracy, the man who could blend in seamlessly at society events, kept his house key under the board like a dockworker popping out for a bite at the pub, like a fishwife just gone out to market! Crozier would have laughed if his breath were not already occupied practically carry the man inside.

“Knew you were strong,” James muttered when Francis _did_ pick him up once they got inside the door (Francis fretted for a moment before convincing himself that it was just - the room was so _narrow_ , it was easiest for everyone. There were no other _motivations_ in the action). “Wish I found out under more pleasing circumstances.”

“Will anything quiet you?” Francis replied, setting him down upon the sofa. “Bleeding like a stuck pig and you still -”

“However will you know I am in earnest?” James asked through a weak grin. “You would think me the most dreadful of teases, otherwise.”

“You _are_ a dreadful tease.” He averted his eyes and James stretched out along the length of the furniture. “Do you have bandages - iodine - anything?” James gestured weakly to a door in the back of the room.

“In there - under the bed,” he replied. Francis left him to fetch the small box out from the narrow mattress. The kit was well used, needles and catgut and sticking plasters all arranged neatly in their places, though most supplies seemed in desperate need of replacement. He returned to James’ side and considered his new predicament of how to actually gain _access_ to the injury, though in the end he gruffly helped James struggle out of his coat, waistcoat and shirt in as perfunctory a manner as he could. What cause should he have to tremble as their fingers worked together to undo buttons and ties? It was nothing he hadn’t seen before, wasn’t even the worst wound he ever tended to, as he inspected it. He had seen far deadlier in his time with Scotland Yard and since.

But there was an intimacy here within the four walls of James’ flat, in the way James wouldn’t meet his eyes whenever Francis ran his hands along his warm skin, in the almost imperceptible shaking of Francis’ hands, and not even Francis Crozier could not even hope to deny the truth of it. So instead he fixed himself more diligently to his task, gently cleaning the wound, murmuring nonsense comfort words to James _Take it easy, you’re doing so well, there’s a lad_. The cut from the knife (wide but not deep, thank heaven), was far from the only of its fellows, and Francis took inventory of the scars across James' body as he worked, the pucker of skin on his arm, the mottled skin along his ribs. _What happened to you,_ he wondered. _What kinds of danger have you been in? I want to know, I want to -_ He discovered he wanted to make a map of James' prior injuries with his lips and tongue, chanced a glance at his face and wished he hadn’t - James bit his lip against the pain, and a thin sheen of sweat stood out along his hairline. Francis sunk his own canines into the inside of his cheek and prattled on, hoping his voice would be able to cover up the hammering of his stupid heart.

Once the wound was clean it was clear the sticking plasters would not be enough. They would pull and the cut would reopen the moment James tried to move. They would have to -

“James, it needs to be stitched closed.”

“Then do it.” There was no hesitation whatsoever in the reply. James still wasn’t looking at him, had hardly looked at him at all since his shirt came off, and Francis wanted to know what that meant as much as he didn't.

“James -”

“It’s nothing I haven’t weathered before.” This answer was sharper. Another unspoken question _what happened to you before?_ choked Francis, but he allowed it to pass unuttered as almost all the fellows that went before it.

“Fine. Do you have something - something to dull the pain?” James indicated the scrubbed and pockmarked table, where the last dreg of cheap gin sat tepid in its bottle. He handed it to James, who drank it down in one swallow, and then covered his eyes with the back of his arm.

“Be quick about it.”

Afterwards, Francis cleaned away the blood and found the cleanest cloth he could to address the sweat and tears that mingled on James’ face.

“Alright, James?” Francis asked quietly. “It’s over now, it's alright.”

“Hurts.”

“I’m sure. But you bore it well.” James glanced down at Francis’ work, to the tidy line of catgut sutures.

“Didn’t realize you were also a medical professional,” James muttered, with just a drop of the usual swagger creeping back in his voice.

“One learns many things, especially on a ship with a doctor who can’t get his sea legs.” He dangled the bait, hoping James would take it, yet was not disappointed when he didn’t.

“Think I’ll live, then?” James asked.

“Oh, a hundred years, yet.”

“ _Only_ a hundred?”

Francis chuckled, absentmindedly brushed a strand of hair that had fallen across James’ face back behind his ear. He fetched James some water and bullied him into drinking it, found himself staring at the chipped rim of the glass after it had been set upon the floor, the threadbare sofa, the wallpaper peeling down the walls.

“Have you something to say about the state of the room?” James questioned, and Francis realized James was staring at him intently.

“No,” Francis replied. “It’s only that - Perhaps I imagined something…”

“Something more elegant?”

“Something more befitting your tastes, I suppose,” said Francis, attempting to return to the question at hand, though he could feel his cheeks burning and had no whiskey at hand to blame for the condition.

“Yes, well, we must live within our means, mustn't we?” There was no small amount of bitterness in James’ words.

“I thought Gentleman Thief would be a more lucrative position, myself.”

“I assure you, we were _both_ surprised on that front. It appears that when you’ve stolen the silver out of one of the finest houses in London, it’s rather hard to find someone to take it off your hands.”

“What about Sir Thomas Digby’s horse?”

“In a stable in Soho. Can’t find a buyer.”

“Barrow’s antique swords?”

“Probably halfway across the world in Dundy - in a friend’s sea chest by now. Told him to keep them safe for me - he doesn’t even know what they _are_ , and _he’s_ on board the _Warrior_ , bound for the Antipodes.

“The -” Francis swallowed. “The emeralds?”

James nodded his head towards the only bit of finery throughout the entirety of the rooms: a rack of fine clothes beside a vanity covered in costume jewelry. Hung along the top of the mirror were Lady Prendergast’s fine emeralds, and Francis could imagine James there, clasping the elegant necklace around his neck, admiring himself in the mirror for no one’s benefit but his own. But that was all wrong, wasn’t it? James was meant to be out, to be _seen_. His fingers twitched, and he turned back to James, who was watching him with wide, worried eyes.

“You were right,” Francis said with a shrug.

“About what?”

“They do bring out your eyes. And they look better on you than they ever did on Lady Prendergast.” A wide grin broke over James’ face.

“Why Mr. Crozier, with a silken tongue like that you must have no want for company.” Francis’ laughter that followed had a cruel edge to it.

“You’d be the first to ever say so.”

“Then I must count myself as the luckiest man among many fools.” Francis could not attend to the expression on James’ face, and sought the first thing that came to mind.

“What happened here?” Francis asked, placing the tip of his finger not quite against the scar along James’ ribs.

“Chinese sniper bullet. Saw action in the China sea, on board the Monarch.” James’ eyes met his, defiant. It was a challenge if Francis had ever seen one. _You are the one who wants to talk about the past_ , it said. _Don’t expect me to make the first move._

Fine.

“Was that after or before the _Comet_?” Francis levelled. James stilled entirely.

“You remembered,” he breathed.

“I needed some reminding,” Francis admitted. “As I’m sure you knew. But yes, I remembered.”

“I was hoping you would.”

“Why?”

“Because I remembered _you_.” Since he was able to trace the patterns there, Francis noticed that James’ face was so often a careful mix of what he wished others to see, looks and expressions that had a practiced air, shutters always carefully drawn over the windows, so that none could see the world inside. But now that barrier had been thrown open, and the view was breathtaking. (James was always beautiful, but James unguarded was _magnificent_.) There were no words which could match the shape of the emotion building in Francis’ heart, and almost believed that his touch - a thumb drawn along that strong jawline, a kiss finally pressed to the gentle thrum of a pulse against James’ wrist - might be welcome. But excuses came quickly, (it is too late, he is injured, you’re wrong again, you’re wrong, you’re wrong) and he could not meet that openness with its equal.

“James, why reach out to me in the first place?” Francis wondered, turning away. “Had I recognized you from the start -”

“You have to _see_ something in order to recognize it later, Francis.” That strange shutter, so recently opened, slammed shut, and Francis mourned its loss. “I could hardly find you guilty of _seeing_ me on the Comet. I was quite safe, in that regard.”

“I remember the storm,” Francis replied, quietly. “I know I saw you then.” James blinked at him, once, twice, opened his mouth and then shook his head.

“A fool, I think you called me then?”

“I don’t -”

“You were right, of course -”

“I wasn’t-”

“Though you only have yourself to blame for all this… this Magpie business It's how I got the idea in the first place, saw your name in the paper - lauding how you had solved some such case or another - and considered how well mine would look alongside it. Well, not _mine_ , exactly. But you needed a nemesis, all the best detectives have them. I thought it might be fun to be yours.”

“James…”

“After all, If you could be a navy man turned inspector turned private detective why should I not be a navy man turned professional thief. Let’s see what a fool I was if I outsmarted one of the brightest minds in the city.”

“I hardly think I’ve the brightest mind in the city, James. I didn’t know it was you, all those times in disguise.”

“That’s not your fault, I’m _excellent_ at disguises. But you found clues at each crime scene the police could not, deduced my movements with less than an hour’s observation! Do you know how long it took me to come up with those plans?”

“Your plans, need I remind you, were largely successful.”

“I didn’t intend on anything more past that first night, you know, with the emeralds. I wanted the headlines to read _‘Peacock Outsmarts Famous Detective.’_ I reserved a place for the clipping on my wall. I kept hoping they would change it, you see, once you told them what kind of feather it was, but I should have known better than -”

“What changed?”

“I just _told_ you they never changed the name-”

“You said you hadn’t intended any more past that first night. What - What changed?” James let out a small, exasperated groan, threaded through with pain and drink and exhaustion. It was a sound Francis knew quite well, had become intimately acquainted with it as he dragged his body through each miserable day for years.

“The way you looked at me. Like… like you could see straight through the disguise and - through all the rest of it - to all I had ever been. I found I wanted to - wanted to be seen by someone, anyone. Thought you might be able to.” He snorted in derision. “And here you see me plain, Francis Crozier. A thief who steals the unsellable. A man with a fine coat and a filthy room, a boy who couldn’t forget a man who hardly remembered him at all.”

“Nonsense,” Francis soothed. “I see a man who has made his own way in the world.” Here Francis longed to give into temptation and trace the pads of his fingers along James’ scars. “A man to whom life and society has not been kind, who has defied societal expectations of him at each turn, bested their rules at their own parties.”

“Don’t be kind,” James retorted. “God, I _hated_ you, Francis. On the _Comet_. You were so - so _unlike_ what I thought an officer should be, miserable, drunk. I thought you should be all gallant and smiles, like the second lieutenant - lord, I don’t even remember his name. But then none of them - _none_ of them knew what they were really doing, and I thought ‘well that’s not their fault there hardly is anything _to_ do’ but then there _wasn’t_ and that storm blew in and they were all sick or just - went off their heads while you - cool as you please - you just sailed us out of danger.”

“I was _terrified_ , James,” Francis said, but James shook his head.

“You still _did_ something!” he protested. “You led when it _mattered_ , which is more than I can say for any other officer that day. They never even _thanked_ you for it!” He swept his arm head of him in one of the grand gestures he often spoke with before drawing back with a hiss of pain. “And... I - I realized that everything I thought the Navy should be was - nothing. Lies. I thought I could get by with the right words in the right places, but if someone like you had no hope for a command then - my dreams - the dreams of the bastard son of an ambassador - were a joke. Even my name - my full name, - James Fitzjames. It’s made up. Like - like a joke. A bad pun, stolen from someone else. A Magpie.”

“James…”

“Maybe, _maybe_ I could have made lieutenant by now if I licked the right boots, scraping by on half pay, suffering heat stroke in the East Indies -”

“Why did you leave, then?”

“Why did _you_?” James challenged. _You first_.

“I left because there was no - no hope of anything, a career, advancement. I had no desire to twirl around the world, picking off pirate ships one by one.” He cannot picture James satisfied with such a fate, either. Francis had imagined discovery, sailing out into the boundless blue, dreamed of icebergs, of mountains not seen by any man and, for the first time, it was not James _Ross_ he pictured beside him.

“There was no glory in it,” James agreed, drawing Francis back to the present. “There was nothing, and how could I -” He stopped, caught in the throes of a spasm of pain. Unthinking, Francis gave him his hand. James squeezed and would not relinquish it. “I come from - I come from nowhere, Francis. Family who doesn’t wish to know me, save for a brother with a family of his own, friends all scattered to the winds. Nowhere.” He looked away, towards the smudged window. “And coming from nowhere makes you nothing.”

“Nothing?” Francis asked. “This, from the Magpie himself? The man with no less than fifteen ballads sung about his masterful deeds in every public house from here to Mayfair?” James shrugged.

“That’s all - all just vanity.” He swept his hand over the dingy room, the rack of clothing in the corner, the dust, the smudged window. “ _This_ is the lair of the Magpie. At the end of vanity. You’re the only person who knows.” James closed his eyes and turned away. “What I _really_ am.”

“And that would be?”

“A fraud. A man who so - so longed for recognition he’d dream up the most absurd thief he could imagine just to see if he could do it.” Francis allowed his thumb to run small circles onto the back of James’ hand until James’ breathing quieted.

“You did,” Francis said, after a minute.

“Did what?”

“Become the most absurd thief anyone could imagine. I think you’re the type of man who could become anything he likes.”

“Francis -”

“I meant it. You’re not a joke, not to anyone - not to me. I’ll not lie that you’ve drawn smiles from me on occasion, but never at your expense.” James’ expression opened at last, and the smile Francis received was quite different than those which had gone before.

“You’re quite handsome even with your frowns as well.”

“Well that’s that,” Francis untwined their fingers, got up from the sofa as if to leave. “If you’re already turning to mockery you’re more than recovered enough for me to -” But James’ hand shot out and gripped his arm, then dropped it as if the very fabric of Francis’ shirt had scorched his skin.

“Won’t you stay, for a time?” James asked, as a small flush crept up his cheeks. “Not - you don’t have to, I only meant just - just until I-”

“Of course,” Francis said, simply, sitting back down at once. “I was only having a bit of fun. I’d not leave you just like that. Though I should help you to bed.” James flashed his crooked grin, all hints of nervousness gone, if they were ever there at all.

“Unlucky me, that you should say such a thing when I am so grievously wounded.”

“You wouldn’t be hurt at all, if you’d just stayed _out_ of it.”

“I _told_ you not to go off alone, and I _knew_ you wouldn’t listen,” James scolded Francis while allowing himself to be manhandled into bed. “Have to do everything myself.”

“There was a _squad_ of constables at the ready -”

“Who, I will not hesitate to observe, were _nowhere_ near when you needed them to be.”

“I’ll have to consult you next time I’m tracking a killer.”

“See that you do. It’s an entirely different experience from above.” Francis fluffled the threadbare pillow that supported James’ head.

“Do you need anything else?”

“If I knew you’d be this good to me I’d have gotten myself stabbed long ago. If we do this again I’ll be sure to -”

“You’ll never be doing it _again_ , if I have anything to say about it.”

“Is that a promise, Francis Crozier?”

“It’s a threat.”

* * *

Francis remained until he was sure James was sleeping, until the windows had gone grey with the dawn and the noises of a city coming alive sounded from the street. He tried to rise quietly, but the door squeaked something awful as soon as it was addressed, and James’ eyes fluttered sleepily open. Francis thought he looked quite a sight, with his dark hair spread out over the pillow, long limbs stretched beneath the blanket. It was a sight he would not mind seeing again. And again. And again.

“Off already?” James mumbled.

“Thought I’d get an early start on the day,” Francis replied, weakly.

“Dreadful idea. You should come back here and rest with me.” When Francis, paralyzed by indecision, made no movement, either away or towards him, James pursed his lips in an attempt at a smile. “I suppose I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

“Do we have a pressing engagement I was previously unaware of?”

“Not you, me. With Scotland Yard.” Francis sighed.

“No,” he said after a moment. “No I shouldn’t think so.”

“But - Your Mr. Ross, surely -”

“He was never _my_ Mr. Ross.” Francis said. “And there are worse things that dwell at the heart of London than some dandy hopping over the rooftops with some elegant family’s stolen silver.” James considered a moment.

“I hope you don’t - I hope you don’t think last night was some sort of - I didn’t do it so you’d let me go.” It had the air of a confession, but Francis batted the miasma away.

“It's nothing half of them don’t deserve anyway,” he muttered, his eyes flicking off towards the corner of the room. “They want to go around dripping with silver and gems and jewels, maybe it’s just as well they get a different sort of attention for it. If you could, just - well, don’t go back to being the Magpie _right_ away. I have this dreadful sense you’ll steal your own case file straight out of the station, just to prove you can.”

“Oh, with this injury I believe my days of hopping away across the London skyline are over for some time. I’ll have to do something else.”

“It’s just as well, I’m getting too old to chase you.” There was a pause, and Francis, who did not know how to say what he wished, again placed his hand upon the door.

“Francis?” There was no mistaking the plaintive nature in which James spoke his name, and Francis could no more have walked out the door without addressing it than he could have sunk straight through the floorboards.

“Yes?”

“What do you -” He sighed. “What am I to do, if not this?” Francis tapped his toes in his shoes. It did not seem like this was the question James wished to ask, but he had an answer, nonetheless.

“Return the pieces, the ones you haven’t sold. Secretly, of course. The fervor would die down. Put your skills to some decent use. You could do something a bit more legitimate. Write a novel about yourself, you’d like that, especially when it sells well. Or work as an investigator, you found Hickey quickly enough, I’d love to have you -

“Oh you’d _have me_ , _would you_?” James smarmed. Francis blushed, deeply at the implication. Well, if James was going to tease -

“Only if you wanted.” A smile as bright as the dawn broke over James’ face and he threw his head back to the bed dramatically.

“My _word_ sir, such boldness! I’m sure I shall simply expire from your _audacity_.”

“I’ll leave you to your rest, then.”

“I’ll see you soon.”

“I look forward to it.”

With that, Francis tipped his hat, and closed the door behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, theres still one more chapter to go ;) 
> 
> Come over and yell at me at [@soft-october-night](https://soft-october-night.tumblr.com/)


	8. He Sings Them for You Special, He Knows You're Afraid of the Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so excited to finally share this ending with everyone.

Jopson only mildly panicked upon arriving home (loose limbed and smiling from his well deserved time in the country) and finding a trail of mud from the door to Francis’ bedroom that concluded in a pile of bloodstained clothes.

“It’s not _my_ blood.” Francis’ attempted to comfort him when Jopson rushed into his bedchamber and demanded an explanation, though one glance at the even more scrutinizing look from his steward informed him he had botched the job. Oh dear. At this rate, Ned would never be able to convince him to go away again.

Francis dressed and, true to his word, appeared in Ross’ office that afternoon to detail how he managed to track down Hickey (help from James Fitzjames, you remember, I introduced the two of you last night?) and all that had happened between them until Ross and his men arrived. Francis was no storyteller, but made gasps in all the right places and went quite white when Francis described how Hickey poked a knife into his ribs.

He hoped his meager embroidery of the story might quiet Ross’ natural curiosity, steer him away from questions about James. But Ross had not made chief inspector for nothing, and he made frequent interruptions in order to learn more about where James had so suddenly come from, how Francis knew him, remark how familiar they had grown in such a short time. Francis made valiant efforts at evasions which soon found themselves devolving into white lies, half truths, and pure fabrication. Francis found himself sweating before they hardly began.

By the time Francis stumbled from the office later that day, bleary eyed but still in possession of James’ secret (despite Ross’ best efforts) the news had sunk their teeth into the meat of the story, and he had to listen to a handful of woeful approximations of his name shouted through missing teeth as the news boys tried to rid themselves of their papers to a voracious public. No mention was made of the assistance Francis had received at the hands of The Magpie, which should have cheered him but instead caused Francis an amount of distress he would have called concerning if he cared to examine it for too long.

The reasons he told himself, “If his name appeared in the papers it would have brought with it attention and perhaps unwanted questions,” and “Ross might forget about the whole thing, if you’re very lucky,” could not hope to hold sway over _saw your name in the paper… considered how well mine would look alongside it_ as it ricocheted between the walls of his skull.

He would carry that phrase, and many more that had been spoken in the quiet darkness of James’ flat, with him through the days and weeks that followed, those same days and weeks in which he kept a sharper eye on the post for his name written in a particular, ostentatious hand, carefully examined the faces in the street, for a strong jaw and a sparkle in an eye. Yet he heaved a small sigh of disappointment each morning Jopson brought him nothing but letters and notices requesting him on cases or interviews, or invitations to conduct seminars abroad, chewed the inside of his mouth upon returning home after another evening with not a single sighting of the singular Magpie.

The path to James’ door had not been forgotten; it called to him each time he set foot past his own step, a siren that was always singing in the back of his mind. But there were other memories of other journeys that began similarly, journeys which ended in missteps and mistakes and misconceptions, _that isn’t what I meant at all_ , too many to number, too many to be sure that _this_ time, _this time_ things would be different.

So his feet did not stray from their usual bath, and gradually, Francis’ life returned to normal. The attention the Turnback Killer brought eventually quieted but the requests for new cases and consultations remained higher than ever. He and Blanky (with the occasional help from Jopson and Ned) stopped cheating spouses, found blackmailers. thieves, and long lost adult children (who more often than not wanted to be left alone by their overbearing parents). Bit by bit, his name vanished from the paper.

So did the Magpie’s.

* * *

Francis blinked awake.

Something - some noise, had awoken him from a light slumber. His sleep was always lighter, nowadays, since he’d kicked the bottle aside. But there was a chill as well, and he looked to the window to see the gentle flutter of curtains, a window being hastily closed by -

“James?” The figure at the window stilled.

“Yes, Francis?”

“James, what on earth are you doing in my room?” Francis drew the blankets all the way up to his chest, in some instinctual bid to defend himself. From _what_ , precisely, Francis could not say.

“Would you believe me if I told you I was back to my old habits?” James asked. Francis shook his head.

“I’m not distinguished, no title, no land, and I don’t possess anything nearly as valuable as would tempt your skill. Try again. And turn up the lamps while you’re at it, I’m too old to be squinting in the dark.” James sighed, and turned around at last to set about lighting the lamps with an almost sheepish look on his stupidly handsome face. With the room thus illuminated, Francis could see James’ hands, tucked into the small of his back, his feet, uneasily trading James’ weight back and forth. If Francis didn’t know better, he would be certain that any moment James was going to fall backward out of the open window rather than remain another moment in his bedroom.

“Must you always be so dreadfully ill towards yourself?” James demanded. This was not what Francis had expected, and he blinked in confusion.

“What do you mean?”

“To claim that you have nothing that would tempt my skill!”

“What are you talking about?” James heaved an exasperated sigh.

“You _told_ me I was a dreadful tease. And perhaps it began that way, but -” James stopped, searched the corners of the room for something he must have found. “Tell me you haven’t noticed. Tell me you don’t - Francis, if I am alone in this, I will go climb right back out that window and you’ll never -”

Francis sat straight up in bed, reached out to quiet James’ hand, which was flittering about the room in obvious distress.

“You shouldn’t be climbing at all,” he murmured, brushing his thumb over the knuckles. “Not after your - your injury.” He gently pulled James towards him, still twitchy and unsure. Strange to see him so, when he had always been bold and outspoken with Francis before. No, that wasn’t quite right. There had been something else, ever since the night that James sprang out of a dress, a quiet vulnerability simmering just below the surface of his skin that Francis had learned to look for. James sat beside him on the bed, breathing ragged.

“I’m _more_ than capable of climbing through your _window_ , Francis, I’ve done it before-” James clacked his mouth shut.

“It _was_ you,” Francis breathed. “When I was - when I was ill. I thought it was - well, a dream, or a hallucination. But I… Were you _worried about_ me, Magpie?”

“I was merely checking to see if you weren’t _dead_!” James said, in mock outrage. “Who would try and capture me then? And when you _weren’t_ I -”

“I hoped it was real,” Francis admitted, in a very small voice he didn’t know he still possessed. “I’m not - I’m not angry. I’m glad.”

“Glad?”

“I thought about you. Since - since the night we stopped Hickey. I watched the mail, hoped you would accost me in the street like you had so many times before.”

“You could have come to my door, if you wanted.”

“And say what? What could I have hoped to -”

“Francis either I’m not _nearly_ as skilled at this as I’ve been told or you’re grievously obtuse.”

Before Francis could reply, James leaned forward, and pressed his lips against Francis’. A startled breath lost itself somewhere in his throat, his fingers twitched with the desire to touch, to grasp, and when James began to draw back Francis yanked him back by his lapels, deepening the kiss, tracking the line of James’ smile with the tip of his tongue. Francis cupped James' face in his hands, delicately brushed his thumbs at last over those cheekbones which had taunted him for weeks. James made a small noise in the back of his throat which cracked something open in Francis chest, and he knew that, regardless of what he deserved, he _wanted._

“Now, is that evidence enough of my devotion?”

“It’s a start,” Francis said, dazed. “But… why tonight?”

“Because I realized at breakfast today that if I waited for _you_ I’d be old and gray.”

“You could have come in the front door.”

“I had toast halfway to my mouth and my hair was a fright,”

“ _After_ breakfast.”

“Could I have?” James’ tone wavered, and Francis wondered if this question might be in earnest. He marveled about this side of James, one which was unsure of his own welcome.

Francis found himself startlingly sympathetic to the notion.

“You would be welcome here any hour of the day,” Francis smiled at him, and James’ mouth opened into a delightful oh of surprise which Francis promptly kissed.

“Mmm, perhaps I should have. I believed I reasoned to myself that it was riskier.”

“Yet you still made the trip.” Francis’ eyes flicked away. “Why?”

“Francis, please, I should think that’s obvious,” James laughed. “I was hoping - I had to know if you meant it.”

“Meant what?”

“You’d have me if I wanted?” There was a soft sound Francis recognized too late as his own gasp, and it was soon swallowed

“Yes.”

“Oh, good.” James grinned, on surer ground, heedless of the shifting stones beneath his feet. “Do you remember that night after the opera?”

“What does that have to do with now?” Francis asked him with an arched eyebrow. James slipped out of his coat and set it down on the chair next to the bed.

“Well, you asked me I might thank you properly should the need arise.”

“Ah, I see now. Has the need arisen?” Francis’ hands reached out of their own volition and began to loosen the tie around James’ neck.

“Indeed sir, it has.” His hands were moving faster now, as were James’. Braces were slipped over wide shoulders, buttons of a nightshirt swiftly becoming undone by clever fingers.

“And to what do I owe this outpouring of gratitude?” James hissed as Francis drew the tips of his fingers along James’ collarbone.

“For the other night.”

“I rather think it is _I_ who should be thanking you.”

“And you are free to do so, but me _first_.” James ran a hand down Francis bare chest, and through the exquisite shock of warm contact came another sensation, as James’ fingers met his well worn body, he became acutely aware of his deficiencies, of the differences between their persons.

He never should have asked James to turn up the lamps.

“Only -” he grabbed James’ hand from its further explorations south, and James stilled instantly. “Why - why _me_? There are a thousand other -”

“None of that,” James said against his neck, punctuated the statement with a brush of his lips. “A thousand others couldn’t you from my thoughts and they certainly won’t do so now that I’m in your bed.”

“You’re _on_ my bed,” Francis observed, releasing James’ hand and allowing it freedom to roam where it wished. “A bit further to go to be _in_ it.”

James happily obliged him.

* * *

Several hours later, and for the second time that evening, Francis awoke to a strange sound. The lights had been turned down again, and a faint shadow sat on the edge of the bed.

James was pulling on his clothes.

Francis knew he should let him go, pretend to be asleep. But the place beside him had already gone cold, and the warmth had been so nice and before he could stop himself -

“Leaving already?” Francis' voice struck out against the silence, a pioneer into a precarious unknown. James froze, half into his shirt, peering out Francis through the hole in the neck.

“Well,” James smiled, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Wouldn't do to be caught with the _Magpie_ in your bedroom now, would it?”

“By _whom_?” Francis queried, his face growing redder by the moment. Of _course_ James wouldn’t want to stay, who would want to see _Francis Crozier_ by the light of the morning -

“Would you…” James looked confused. He reached out a hand, and cradled Francis’ jaw in his long fingers. “Do you _want_ me to stay?” He said it in disbelief, like it was a marvel that Francis would want to keep this man in his bed for as long as possible, like _Francis_ was the one doing _James_ the favor by asking him to stay.

“The bed is more than big enough for two,” Francis said, around the knot that had formed in his throat. “But you may do as you like. You _usually_ do.” James considered for a moment, then pulled himself back out of his shirt and threw it somewhere into the darkened depths of the room. He allowed himself to be pulled down into Francis’ waiting embrace, where they cocooned together in the sheets, James’ back to Francis’ chest.

“Keep this up and you’ll force me to say something hideous and treacly,” James mumbled into a pillow, once he had settled.

“Oh?” Francis nosed the back of James’ neck. “How dreadful.”

“You’ll mock me for it.”

“Doubtlessly.”

“The only reason I’m even considering saying it is because I’m not in my right mind, thanks to your _exertions_ earlier.”

“Thought you were going to shout the house down,” Francis chuckled. The uncomfortable twist sitting in his chest since he’d awoken unwound and drained away.“Should be grateful Jopson has his own flat or else I fear we would have given him more than enough reason to give his notice.”

“Jopson?”

“My steward.”

“Is he the morose looking fellow?”

“Morose? Oh - no, no, that’s Ned - Jopson is the other one I’m sure you spied coming and going while you were busy _stalking_ me.”

“You were being targeted by a killer, who - by the way, was keeping his _own_ watch on your flat.”

“Is _that_ how you tracked him down?”

“If it was?”

“I'd thank you for it.”

“Oh.” James smiled to himself, quite pleased.

“Weren’t you going to tell me something so sweet it would rot my teeth out?”

“My attempts at distraction have failed, I see,” James groaned.

“I’m a stubborn man, James Fitzjames.”

“Fine.” James wiggled about, ostensibly to make himself comfortable but taking so long Francis thought it was yet another attempt at steering their conversation elsewhere, and began to pull away.

“Ugh, alright,” James grumbled, drawing Francis’ arm back over his chest. It’s only - well, I had this idea, when I first sent the letter…”

“To become my nemesis, I know.”

“Well, _yes_ , but it was more than that. I thought - I _imagined_ or fancied or -” James ran his tongue along the front of his teeth. “I wondered to myself if I might steal your heart. I'd call it my greatest caper. All fancy and vanity, you understand. A silly midshipman’s crush combined with the competitive spirit of his much older self.” James tilted his head about, chanced a glance at Francis, as if trying to read his thoughts. “Only…”

“Only?”

“ _You’re_ the thief, in that regard.” The sentence plunged into a silence louder than any Francis could remember, far louder than any _no, you must be mistaken,_ or _no, I’m sorry to have allowed you to believe_ , or _no_ or _no_ or _no_. Francis blinked once, twice, went over it again in his head to make sure he head correctly, that it wasn’t just wistful thinking or -

“James -” The younger man stuck his chin out, stubborn to the end.

“Though I won’t ask my property be returned to me. I think it’s - I _hope_ it’s rather safe where it is.”

“James…”

“Now here it comes -” James closed his eyes, bracing against an attack that would never come.

“No - no,” Francis soothed. “It’s only… well, I suppose you could say that this… your _planned_ caper I mean, was a success.”

“Oh -” James blushed all the way down his chest, and Francis bent his head to chase its progress with his tongue. James responded by running his bare toes against Francis' leg in what was meant to be a suggestive gesture, but Francis yelped and pulled away.

“Good _god_ man, how are your feet so cold?”

“I got out of bed not five minutes ago!”

“Surely that’s not enough to -”

“It’s _winter_ Francis, and your carpet might as well be burlap for all the good it does.”

“Ah, and I’m sure you know where I could find one better?”

“I _would_ , at that.”

“Very well. We can go pick one out in the morning.” He could feel James' eyes burning into him, and closed his own, as if about to fall fast asleep.

“What are you - Francis! Francis you aren’t asleep, I demand you open your eyes this instant and tell me why -.” But Francis only laughed, pulled James closer to him and planted a few kisses along the line of James’ shoulder in an attempt to quiet him.

“I suppose you think this is settled,” James sighed. “Well, it is. For now. But I’m determined to have a terrific row over breakfast. Terrify poor Jopson.”

“You intend on spending time here in the future, do you not?” Francis said against his neck. “I’ll not have my calves seizing up because of your freezing cold feet.”

“I would - well, I wouldn’t be opposed to -”

“Go to sleep James. We’ll sort it out in the morning.”

“‘We’ll sort it out in the morning’ - I’ll not be satisfied with just the carpet, you know. There’s the table - the curtains.”

“I have no fear that you will be positively appalled by all of it, come the daylight.”

“Not _all_ of it,” James replied pointedly. Francis did not have to look far to find a mischievous glint in his eye.

“It’s time for a few changes around here anyway,” Francis muttered, and this at last seemed to settle James a bit, and he quietly snuggled against Francis, who could feel the outline of James’ smile along his bare shoulder. “And the papers botched it again,” Francis added, almost an afterthought. “Your name should have been alongside mine.”

“Ah well, as long as you -” Francis was in no mood to hear a dismissal, and shook his head.

“You did excellent work with Hickey. Wouldn’t mind having you along on a more permanent basis.”

“Are you speaking on a basis of business or pleasure?”

“I’ve never mixed the two before.”

“Could be the ideal time to start.”

There would be other things to sort out on the morrow. How to return the missing pieces that had not yet been sold. How to tell Jopson that there would be a guest for breakfast he hadn’t shown in the night before. How to explain _any_ of it to Ross, or even if he should. (Blanky would just laugh - there was no danger there.) But for the moment, Francis Crozier, Private Detective was curled around James Fitzjames, Former Gentleman Thief, and could not be called upon to do much more than sigh peacefully, and drift off to sleep.

* * *

To say that Jopson was not startled by the guest’s appearance would have been untrue, and his agitation was made greater more the fact that this guest emerged from Crozier’s room, wrapped in a spare dressing gown with wild hair and a relaxed, easy expression on his face as he held out a large hand and was introduced to Jopson as a ‘James Fitzjames’ by a smiling, red-faced Francis Crozier beside him. Yet most unsettling of all was the cheer with which Francis followed this statement, laughing and clapping his steward on the shoulder as he asked if they couldn’t make room for one more at breakfast, While the alcohol had sapped much of his ire, despondency had been more Mr. Crozier’s attitude of late, not this - this unusually boundless joy.

Jopson was a professional, and he dutifully served a breakfast he managed to extend for two while ignoring the pointed smiles, the bare feet touching under the table, the too-frequent-to-be-entirely-accidental brushes of fingertips as the sugar bowl was passed back and forth.

The steward also refused to be shaken by his master’s declaration that he would be shopping for _home furnishings_ later in the day (with Mr. Fitzjames’ help, of course) nor when the workman arrived to lay the rug and the many deliveries of curtains and linens afterwards.

It seemed that Mr. Fitzjames was planning on spending a great deal of time within Francis Crozier’s flat.

Well. He would find it _spotless_.

(Jopson would breathlessly tell Ned the whole of it later.)

Within three months, James abandoned his old haunt (which Francis would forever refer to as a ‘hovel’ and James would loftily call a ‘temporary reduction of circumstances’), and updated his status from full time guest to full time resident in Francis flat. Jopson quickly learned which mornings he should wait in the kitchen, or perhaps go out to run a few errands, rather than serve the tea so early. He became well acquainted with the manner in which he should bob and weave around the table when James was in the middle of one of his extravagant stories and his arms and hands were flying all about the room, acquainted himself with the soft, gently mocking smiles Crozier would throw toward the storyteller.

The redecorating that began in the bedroom creeped down the hall, covered the study, the sitting room, the kitchen. These rooms, which had been rather dreary and drab for the past several years as Francis dragged himself from one end of them to the next found themselves transformed into a cheery, well apportioned chambers that slowly began to host an ever growing crowd of friends.

The Magpie, however, was not quite finished with his moment in the spotlight. After all, almost every single treasure _had_ to be returned in a manner equally as ostentatious with which it was stolen.

Sir Thomas Bigby’s horse was discovered coming in first in a race at Cheltenham, winning a purse of several thousand pounds that vanished, along with the jockey, as suddenly as the horse reappeared.

After the arrival of a certain ship containing an officer (overly fond of biscuits) who certainly was _not_ aware of the nature of the weapons which resided in his sea chest, Sir John Barrow’s prized swords were delivered to him when he stepped out for a moment at a formal hearing and returned to find the swords stuck to the back of his chair. (None present claimed to have seen a thing.)

As for the Davenports, well, nothing would do but that the silver be returned during a party, and the guests (and bewildered hosts) would be astonished to find the missing silver had been placed at each setting when they arrived in the dining room for dinner.

Almost each treasure was reacquainted with the home of its owner in a similar manner, to the amusement of the reading public and chagrin of Scotland Yard.

The emeralds of Lady Prendergast, however, remained lost.

Francis’ closests friend’s kept their opinions (on what would have been a sordid affair indeed if the truth got out) mostly to themselves.

Blanky stopped by one afternoon during tea at Francis' request to discuss a new case.

“So who’s this new gent you say you’ve got working with you now?” Blanky asked as he walked in and tossed his hat into a waiting armchair, slipping through Jopson’s outstretched hands. “Trying to put me out to pasture the moment someone else comes along, eh? Ross says he’s never heard of the man but the way you talk about him he would swear you’ve known him for -”

Then Blanky took one look at the two of them (sitting so close that James was practically sitting in Francis’ lap) and burst out into peals of laughter so loud that tears sprang to his eyes and he later complained that undoubtedly he had reopened his wounds. Francis never knew just exactly _how_ Blanky had _instantly_ realized Fitzjames’ true identity (and Blanky would be close lipped about it for the rest of his days).

“Frank I knew from the moment I met you there would be some wild nonsense in your future, but _this_ -” He almost doubled over again, and was still attempting to calm himself while he pumped James’ hand up and down. “Pleasure to meet you properly, Mr…”

“Fitzjames. James Fitzjames.”

“Of _course_ you are,” Blanky said, mysteriously. “Frank, you know I was _joking_ , correct? About your infatuation with a certain…” James and Francis looked at him warily, and he trailed off. “Well, no matter. Only how will I poke fun at you now knowing you might go off and cage yourself a _bird_ at the slightest provocation?” James serenely sipped at his tea (instead of pointing out that it was rather _Francis_ who had been tamed _by_ a bird, in his own opinion), while Francis turned a page in the paper (rather than observe that James _could not_ be caged, and stayed with Francis of his own, bewildering volition), and neither acknowledged the elephant in the room, awash with blue feathers. “Alright, point taken.” Blanky pulled up a chair and plunked himself down, helped himself to a scone. “Now what's all this about a missing heiress?”

Sophia insisted that the pair be frequent guests in her home, and they were sure she was none the wiser until one day she insisted James accompany her to the shops, "For he is known for his keen eye and sense of fashion, especially regarding furs, is he not?" She smiled wickedly to see their flabbergasted faces, and made no mention of it again. 

If asked, Ross would say he didn’t believe the pair as far as they could be thrown (and with the two of them so inseparable lately it would be impossible to throw them individually) but the Magpie had ceased his reign of not quite terror, the treasures had (mostly) been returned, the lords and ladies had stopped their panic about Grandmother Mary’s locket or Great Uncle Jon’s silver, and the Turnback killer was firmly behind bars, awaiting trial.

If the recent return of the small, soft smiles that had so deserted Francis’ features for years made any sort of impression on Ross’ ultimate decision not to pursue the matter any further, that was his concern.

And if there were small, strange stabs of something that might have been jealousy if he looked at it too closely when Francis reached for Fitzjames’ hand across a breakfast table - well, that was why he wasn’t looking too closely.

The Magpie case was declared closed, and Scotland Yard cheerfully disposed of the case file where no one would ever see it. The emeralds were never recovered, though Lady Prendergast didn’t seem to mind. The emeralds had always looked dreadful against her skin, and the mother who bestowed them upon her had left no happy memories behind to be kindled by the fondling of the jewels between her fingers. (The insurance against the gems also went rather far in soothing the loss, as did the attention she received from friends and neighbors, a spotlight she had not enjoyed even as a young debutante.) So the loss of the emeralds was forgiven.

They had found a handsomer home, anyway, if one were to ask Private Detective Francis Crozier his opinion. He had intimate knowledge of their ultimate fate, as they were, in private, of course, frequently found upon the throat of his assistant and partner in all things, James Fitzjames.

They brought out his eyes in a manner most fetching.

> **MISSING HEIRESS FOUND**
> 
> The famous Miss Eugenie Bouvier was found early yesterday morning in an inn at Portsmouth. She claims to have no memory of how she arrived there, or with whom she had absconded. Further information could not be gathered from men responsible for the discovery, Private Detectives Francis Crozier and James Fitzjames, who remain tight lipped on the manner of their investigation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They lived happily ever after and retired to somewhere warm and sunny. 
> 
> We reached the end! I hope you all enjoyed this weird and wild au. Much love to the friends who were kind enough to encourage this fic and scream about it with me. If you'd like to come hang out with me over on tumblr I'm over here at [@soft-october-night](https://soft-october-night.tumblr.com/)


End file.
